En Banc DC Circuit Reinstates Funding Of The Most Corrupt Program Ever Enacted

I recognize that there could be many contenders for the title of the “Most Corrupt Program Ever Enacted.”  However, I challenge any reader, or anyone else for that matter, to name any program in the vast federal handout universe more corrupt that the so-called Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that was created by the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, § 60103, and codified at 42 U.S.C. § 7434.  

If you have somehow forgotten about this program, it is the one that was the subject of a famous Project Veritas recording, made during the interim between President Trump’s second election in November 2024 and his inauguration in January 2025.  In the December 2024 video, an EPA “special advisor” named Brent Efron described a rush in the Biden EPA’s last days to commit huge amounts of funds to friendly non-profits in a way to completely avoid oversight and to make them difficult for the incoming Trump people to claw back.  Efron characterized what was going on as “throwing gold bars off the Titanic.”

Upon entering office, the Trump people set out to and then did identify the funds in question — about $20 billion — and promptly rescinded the grants.  Plaintiffs went to the D.C. District Court, and got an injunction mandating disbursement of the funds.  Congress then repealed the grants in the One Big Beautiful Bill of July 2025.  In September 2025 a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit upheld the rescission of the grants, and held that the only remedy of the grant recipients would be to seek contractual damages in the Court of Claims.  A rare victory for the taxpayers?  Not so fast.  The plaintiff grant recipients asked for en banc review from the entire D.C. Circuit, and on August 4 the full D.C. Circuit mostly re-instated the original District Court injunction mandating distribution of the funds.

The vote of the judges in the D.C. Circuit is almost completely along party lines, and illustrates the extent to which the Democratic-appointed judges will uphold anything, no matter how corrupt, to support their team.