“The manager doesn’t have the authority to alter insurance policies just because they don’t like them,” Blanchard stated at a digital briefing for reporters on Friday. “Congress makes the legislation, not the president and positively not Elon Musk,” she stated, referring to the billionaire donor whom Trump has deputized to chop authorities spending.

Feeling the freeze

Throughout the nation, the spending freeze has thrown into chaos the environmental, resilience and group enchancment packages that Congress approved within the Inflation Discount Act of 2022. Among the many efforts on maintain: clear consuming water, air monitoring, hurricane restoration and electrical faculty buses.

“Actual individuals on the bottom are being damage by the stop-start state of affairs,” stated Blanchard, whose group is working with the Pure Sources Protection Council on the circumstances of 230 grantees in 44 states.

Grantees are in a state of confusion as a result of they haven’t heard straight from EPA, she stated.

Michelle Roos, govt director of the Environmental Safety Community, a coalition of former EPA staff that can also be working with Attorneys for Good Authorities, stated many grantees should not certain what is going on as a result of the company’s staff have been forbidden to speak to individuals exterior of the company.

A number of grantees reached by Inside Local weather Information stated that they weren’t speaking to the press, or didn’t wish to say whether or not or not they may entry their funding.

MDC, a nonprofit in Durham, North Carolina, together with the Hispanic Federation, was alleged to obtain a $3 million environmental justice group change grant for catastrophe restoration and resilience packages in Latino areas of jap North Carolina.

“We have been thrilled to obtain federal assist to do that work, however sadly, like many others, we now have skilled an interruption in accessing this funding,” stated Clarissa Goodlett, MDC’s director of communications.