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Government Watchdog: Trump Administration Illegally Withheld EV Charger Funds
"These bipartisan investments need to start flowing immediately," the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee said of the GAO finding as a lawsuit over the funding got a boost from green groups.
May 22, 2025
Key congressional Democrats on Thursday welcomed a government watchdog's finding that the Trump administration unlawfully withheld appropriated funds for building electric vehicle charging infrastructure across the United States‚ a decision that came as advocacy groups joined a related lawsuit filed by state attorneys general.
Shortly after returning to office in January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to pause disbursement of funds appropriated under the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, specifically mentioning the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program.
In response, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and one of its agencies, the Federal Highway Administration, in February canceled previously issued guidance for the NEVI program and suspended plans that states had submitted for grant money—which led to calls for Congress to stand up to the administration's "illegal attempts to halt legally mandated funding."
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in its Thursday decision that the department violated the Impoundment Control Act: "DOT is not authorized to withhold these funds from expenditure and DOT must continue to carry out the statutory requirements of the program. While DOT cannot withhold these funds under the ICA, DOT could propose funds for rescission or otherwise propose legislation to make changes to the NEVI Formula Program for consideration by Congress."
"The Trump administration didn't just break the law—it shortchanged the American people."
Politicoreported that "the GAO could issue similar rulings in the coming months, as the independent, nonpartisan watchdog agency works through at least 39 investigations into whether the Trump administration violated the Impoundment Control Act. GAO rulings are nonbinding but could influence Congress' response to... Trump's freezing of billions of dollars lawmakers intended to flow to specific programs and projects, as well as the many ongoing lawsuits challenging the president's tactics."
In a Thursday statement about the GAO findings, U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said, "This legal decision affirms what we've long known: The president is breaking the law to block funding Congress passed on a bipartisan basis and that is owed to the American people—simply because he disagrees with it. This plain fact is unacceptable—and it cannot stand any longer."
"Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law by wide margins and specifically provided funding for every state to build out a network of chargers for the electric vehicles that families are increasingly turning to and that are being made right here in America, she continued. "These investments should be getting out the door—creating new jobs and helping Americans get where they need to go without interruption—but President Trump has illegally choked this funding off."
"These bipartisan investments need to start flowing immediately—as do the hundreds of billions of dollars in other investments President Trump is holding up," she added, taking aim at his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director. "I don't care about Russ Vought's personal interpretation of our spending laws; the Constitution is clear, and President Trump simply does not have the power of the purse—Congress does."
House Budget Committee Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) released a similar statement welcoming the GAO's new legal opinion that "the Trump administration broke the law when it blocked funding that Congress had already approved."
"That money was supposed to build and maintain a nationwide EV charging network—and with it, create good-paying jobs in communities across the country," he stressed. "Instead, the administration stalled economic growth, delayed critical infrastructure, and undermined job creation—all without a shred of legal authority."
"This wasn't just a legal violation. It was an economic setback for American workers, and a direct hit to the communities counting on these investments," Boyle added. "The Trump administration didn't just break the law—it shortchanged the American people."
According to Politico, while the DOT could not be reached for comment, an OMB spokesperson called GAO's opinion "wrong" and said the department is "appropriately using the authority granted to it by statute to review state plans."
Standing up for cleaner vehicles and clean air. @sierraclub.org @climatesolutions.org @earthjustice.org and allies sue Trump Admin for illegally impounding funds that Congress appropriated for EV charging. www.sierraclub.org/press-releas...
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— Ross Macfarlane (@rossmacfarlane.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 3:53 PM
The attorneys general of 16 states and the District of Columbia disagree, and have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The Sierra Club, CleanAIRE N.C., Climate Solutions, Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, Plug In America, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, the Southern Environmental Law Center, and the West End Revitalization Association joined that legal challenge on Thursday.
"Donald Trump is trying to cut jobs, increase pollution, and endanger our health. We refuse to let him," said Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous in a statement. "NEVI benefits everyone, whether you drive an EV or not, and the only people who benefit from blocking it are Big Oil and auto executives seeking to keep us hooked on fossil fuel-powered cars, while communities in every corner of the country lose out on infrastructure investments in our growing clean energy economy."
"The NEVI program is working and states are legally entitled to the money allocated to them by Congress," Jealous added. "Once again, we are taking the Trump administration to court over its reckless and illegal actions."
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After Marathon Markup, House GOP Advances 'Most Extreme Anti-Environment Bill in American History'
"Donald Trump and his allies in Congress are working like mad to hand over our public lands to billionaires and corporate polluters to drill, mine, and log with the bare minimum oversight or accountability," said one critic.
May 07, 2025
Leading up to and after an early Wednesday morning vote by a key GOP-controlled committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, Democratic lawmakers and conservationists renewed their criticism of "a corporate polluter's wish list" that Republicans aim to include in the next reconciliation package.
Republican President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to "drill, baby, drill" and raked in cash from the climate-wrecking fossil fuel industry. While House Committee on Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) celebrated the new vote that advanced legislation intended to deliver on the president's "agenda to make our nation energy dominant," Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) has called the effort to pass the polluter-friendly bill "corruption in broad daylight."
"House Republicans' budget cuts national park funding, slashes clean air and water protections, and pushes the most extreme anti-environment bill in American history as the cherry on top," Huffman said on social media Tuesday, when the committee held a markup for the legislation. "Today, while Democrats called out this billionaire giveaway, Republicans hid in their offices."
Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Md.), a panel member who proposed amendments during markup, said in a Tuesday statement that "House Republicans are once again putting polluters over people. But as a mother, I refuse to let my children's future be auctioned off to Big Oil."
"I offered commonsense amendments that range from blocking funds to agencies that refuse to comply with the courts to stopping oil and gas drilling near schools and hospitals," said Dexter. "This bill is a giveaway to Big Oil and billionaires. My amendments demand House Republicans choose: people or polluters?"
We’re more than 8 hours into this Reconciliation markup in the House Natural Resources Committee and the GOP has completely stopped engaging on answering basic questions about their own bill. We have never seen anything like it. It’s going to be a long night.
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— Rep. Melanie Stansbury (NM-01) (@repstansbury.bsky.social) May 6, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Earthjustice has specifically sounded the alarm over proposed lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska; reinstatement of flawed management plans for both locations; additional lease sales in Cook Inlet; and mandates that the U.S. Forest Service enter into long-term timber contracts in each U.S. region annually for the next decade.
"Here in Alaska, temperatures are rising four times faster than the rest of the planet. We're facing warmer and wetter winters, and communities [are] already facing forced relocation because of climate change," Earthjustice Alaska office managing attorney Carole Holley said Monday. "This bill, if passed without drastic changes, would make things worse by doubling down on reckless oil and gas extraction in the Arctic, maximizing mining and logging on lands valued by the public for recreation and subsistence activities, and halting clean energy projects."
"It amounts to a giveaway of some of our most cherished public lands to bolster corporate profits, all based on wildly speculative assumptions about revenue generation," Holley added. "At the same time, the language includes an attempt to throw away commonsense safeguards like judicial review and public participation in the resource decisions that affect our state."
The House Natural Resources Committee released its portion of the Republican House reconciliation bill late last Thursday. It doesn't look good for the wild. More information: biodiv.us/3GHS6cM
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— Center for Biological Diversity (@biologicaldiversity.org) May 6, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Ahead of the vote, Public Citizen research director Alan Zibel issued an ominous warning about Republicans' "radical budget plan."
"Welcome to the American petrostate," Zibel said. Like Holley, he blasted the proposed lease sales and "an absurd 'pay to play' permitting provision allowing wealthy corporations to pay a fee to speed up permitting and exemptions from judicial oversight."
"The plan is fiscally reckless, returning royalty rates to what they were in 1920, and half of what New Mexico and Texas charge," he argued. "Rolling back reforms to the antiquated federal oil and gas program would prevent taxpayers from receiving a fair return for the extraction of our public resources. Doing so would also impede sensible requirements that oil and gas companies clean up their messes."
After the vote, Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, said Wednesday that "public lands shouldn't have a price tag on them. But Donald Trump and his allies in Congress are working like mad to hand over our public lands to billionaires and corporate polluters to drill, mine, and log with the bare minimum oversight or accountability."
"These lands belong to all Americans, they shouldn't be given away to pad corporate bottom lines," Manuel added. "Congressional Republicans have made it clear that this is their plan, and our public lands, our clean air and water, critical habitat, and our communities will be threatened by unchecked industrial development. The American people will not tolerate it."
Food & Water Watch managing director of policy and litigation Mitch Jones put out a similarly critical statement on Wednesday.
"Selling public lands to pay for tax cuts to billionaires is a horrible idea," Jones said. "Fossil fuel corporations have been chomping at the bit to exploit federal protected lands for oil and gas drilling—House Republicans appear all too willing to pave the way. This partisan move to sell off federal lands is a betrayal of public trust. The spending bill must be dead on arrival."
This article has been updated with comment from Food & Water Watch.
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In 'Dead of Night,' House GOP Unveils 'Corporate Polluter's Wish List'
"The sprawling proposal," warned the Sierra Club, "includes dozens of provisions that would benefit the oil and gas industry and other corporations, at the expense of American families."
May 02, 2025
Green groups on Friday decried U.S. House Republicans' proposed text for the upcoming reconciliation bill, which the Natural Resources Defense Council said "contains an unprecedented slate of direct attacks on the environment and public lands and waters."
Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee submitted their proposed section of the massive GOP energy, tax, and national security bill, which is scheduled for a markup on Tuesday.
"The sprawling proposal, released in the dead of night, includes dozens of provisions that would benefit the oil and gas industry and other corporations, at the expense of American families," said the Sierra Club.
"The only way it could be friendlier to Big Oil CEOs would be if they wrote it themselves."
The draft's proposals include fast-tracked and expanded fossil fuel extraction on public lands, mandated oil and gas drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ending protections for Minnesota's pristine Boundary Waters watershed, reinstating canceled leases for the proposed Twin Metals mine in Minnesota, rolling back fossil fuel royalties, and more.
"This proposal is a corporate polluter's wish list," warned Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program. "The only way it could be friendlier to Big Oil CEOs would be if they wrote it themselves."
"Let's be clear, this proposal is a means to an end," Manuel added. "The end is tax cuts for billionaires, and the means are selling off the public lands that belong to the American people. These provisions enable drilling and mining as quickly, lucratively, and free from public scrutiny as possible, even allowing the fossil fuel industry to buy their way out of judicial oversight. It's a giveaway to industry, and Americans should not stand for it."
Defenders of Wildlife warned that "this egregious legislation would undermine critical wildlife protections and destroy or degrade large swaths of wildlife habitats through destructive mandates for increased logging and massive oil and gas lease sales on American public land, including portions of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
Robert Dewey, the group's vice president of government relations, said that "this bill would be devastating for American wildlife and the habitats they depend on."
"It puts a bullseye on already imperiled polar bears, whales, and hundreds of other species that depend on the integrity of federal lands and waters for their survival," Dewey added. "Congress shouldn't be handing over these vital and cherished wildlife habitats on public lands to oil and other extractive companies for bigger profits."
"This measure would give the oil industry free rein to pillage our public lands and oceans."
Kyle Jones, NRDC's federal affairs director, also issued a dire warning:
This measure would give the oil industry free rein to pillage our public lands and oceans. Instead of helping the American people and our shared public resources, it would allow the oil, coal, and timber industries to pick and choose the areas they want to exploit. And it exposes irreplaceable Alaskan wilderness to destructive oil drilling, industrial roadways and mining.
Worst of all, it allows fossil fuel companies and other big polluters to buy their way out of meaningful review or public input into their projects. So, that would mean one set of rules for the fossil fuel and logging barons, and another for the rest of us.
"The best thing that can be said about this measure is that it may be too radical for even this Congress," Jones added. "For the good of Americans and our shared resources, it should be quickly cast aside and forgotten."
The GOP draft follows the Trump administration's publication last month of a proposal that the Center for Biological Diversity warned "would rescind nearly all habitat protections for endangered species nationwide" by changing the regulatory definition of a single word—"harm"—in the Endangered Species Act, the nation's cornerstone wildlife conservation law.
It also comes as the administration, spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency—which has been led by billionaire Elon Musk—eviscerates federal agencies including the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
As he did during his first term, President Donald Trump—who campaigned on a "drill, baby, drill" platform—is pursuing a massive rollback of climate and environmental regulations and has appointed Cabinet secretaries whose backgrounds and beliefs are often inimical to their agencies' purposes.
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