{"id":347240,"date":"2024-10-18T13:24:29","date_gmt":"2024-10-18T11:24:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=347240"},"modified":"2024-10-18T13:24:32","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T11:24:32","slug":"clear-conflict-of-interest-biden-harris-environmental-justice-advisors-raked-in-nearly-500-million-from-taxpayers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=347240","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Clear Conflict of Interest\u2019: Biden-Harris Environmental Justice Advisors Raked In Nearly $500 Million From Taxpayers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Daily Caller<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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Adam Pack<\/a>
<\/strong>Contributor<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Biden-Harris administration\u2019s environmental justice advisors are slated to receive or influence the disbursal of nearly half a billion dollars in grant funding from agencies they advise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These advisors sit on the 36-member White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC), an obscure but influential White House body created by executive fiat in January 2021 to provide<\/a> policy recommendations to federal agency heads as part of President Joe Biden\u2019s \u201cwhole-of-government\u201d approach<\/a> to environmental justice. The vast majority of the grant awards to environmental justice activist groups with representation on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC) fall under the $41.5 billion awarded to the EPA under the Inflation Reduction Act, according to records examined by the Daily Caller News Foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six environmental justice organizations represented on the WHEJAC have been awarded or are slated to receive more than $230 million in EPA grant funding, according to the DCNF review. The EPA has also selected four organizations represented on the WHEJAC to serve as award partners to $200 million in grant awards under the EPA\u2019s $600 million Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking (EJTCG) program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December 2023, the EPA named<\/a> Texas Southern University\u2019s (TSU) Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, represented by Robert Bullard on the WHEJAC, as a recipient of a $50 million award under the agency\u2019s EJTCG program. In April, the EPA doled out<\/a> an additional $156 million to TSU\u2019s Bullard Center to finance the development of community solar projects in \u201clow-income and disadvantaged communities\u201d as part of the IRA\u2019s $7 billion Solar for All program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is a very clear conflict of interest, and no one is going to be providing objective advice, or they\u2019re going to be skewing that advice so it makes them more competitive to receive millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer benefits,\u201d Gunasekara told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The EPA under Trump notably filed<\/a> a directive to bar recipients of EPA grant awards from serving on the agency\u2019s advisory boards in October 2017. The D.C. Circuit of Appeals unanimously struck down<\/a> the directive after extensive litigation in April 2020. (RELATED: Trump\u2019s EPA Will Get Rid Of Science Advisers Who Get Taxpayer Funding)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In October 2023, the EPA announced<\/a> smaller awards of half a million or less to several environmental justice organizations represented on the WHEJAC, including Ironbound Community Corporation, Appalachian Voices and the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance. The EPA confirmed these three awards have been obligated to the designated recipients in a statement to the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vice President Kamala Harris has courted the WHEJAC since the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration. (RELATED: Green New Deal\u2019 Coalition Endorses Kamala Harris After Member Org Was Awarded $50 Million From Her Admin<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need your insight, your expertise, your lived experience. We need your ideas and your recommendations. Basically, we need you, period,\u201d Vice President Kamala Harris told<\/a> WHEJAC members during the advisory council\u2019s first meeting in March 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several months later, the WHEJAC put out<\/a> recommendations advocating against fossil fuel procurement, nuclear power, highway expansion, road improvements and research and development,\u201d in addition to many other left-wing proposals in a May 2021 document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several influential WHEJAC members who lead organizations that have been awarded or are slated to receive major grant awards have endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019 campaign for President.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe environmental justice community will be solidly behind Kamala,\u201d Beverly Wright, WHEJAC member and founder of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice (DSCEJ), told<\/a> Politico in an article published on Aug. 11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Wright and Peggy Shepard, co-chair of the WHEJAC and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, respectively, spoke<\/a> at Democratic National Committee (DNC) Environment and Climate Crisis Council meetings<\/a> during the DNC convention in Chicago in August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHer participation and remarks were not an endorsement of any candidate; but rather her opinion of the environmental record \u2014 both good and bad \u2014 of the Biden administration,\u201d Chris Dobens, director of communications for WE ACT, told the DCNF in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shepard co-signed<\/a> a letter endorsing Harris\u2019 candidacy prior to the DNC Convention in a statement that characterized the Vice President as an \u201cenvironmental justice champion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The WHEJAC has largely avoided congressional scrutiny by Republican lawmakers despite advancing an abundance of far-left environmental policies that conservative energy experts consider harmful to the pocketbooks of low-income and minority communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s probably more accurate to call them the anti-economic growth, the anti-Black progress council,\u201d Donna Jackson, director of membership development at the Project 21 Black Leadership Network, told the DCNF. \u201cThe problem is when they push for all of these radical regulations, when they fight against fossil fuels, who gets sacrificed? Which businesses close? The people that have the least amount of capital \u2014 minority communities. Every recommendation is a regressive tax on Black businesses and Black homeowners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor the last three and a half years, they have been taking actions that have made it harder for communities to live, specifically lower-income minority communities, because of things like inflation and high cost energy, they\u2019ve made life that much harder,\u201d Mandy Gunasekara, former chief of staff to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler, told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former President Donald Trump and his advisors have promised<\/a> to roll back<\/a> the Biden-Harris administration\u2019s environmental agenda, including the EPA\u2019s stringent rules on new electric vehicle sales and the power sector, if he prevails in November. (RELATED: \u2018Gross Overreach\u2019: Energy Groups Urge Congress To Throw Biden-Harris Admin\u2019s \u2018EV Mandate\u2019 Overboard<\/a><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gunasekara confirmed to the DCNF that the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and the EPA\u2019s newly created Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights will likely be on the chopping block as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe would do away with these new offices that were created more as marketing gimmicks and as a process to waste taxpayer dollars by giving funding to nonprofits that have very little to do with improving environmental justice communities and more to do with ensuring Democrats stay in power,\u201d Gunasekara told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPresident Trump advanced conservation and environmental stewardship while promoting economic growth for families across the country,\u201d Karoline Leavitt, Trump Campaign National Press Secretary, wrote in a statement to the DCNF. \u201cAmerica\u2019s energy agenda under President Trump produced affordable, reliable energy for consumers along with stable, high-paying jobs for small businesses \u2014 all while dropping U.S. carbon emissions to their lowest level in 25 years. Kamala Harris\u2019 radical energy policies such as her EV mandate and the Green New Scam will hurt American workers, help China, and do virtually nothing to help the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, DSCEJ, TSU\u2019s Bullard Center, Ironbound Community Corporation, Appalachian Voices and the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance did not respond to the DCNF\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter\u2019s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Biden-Harris administration\u2019s environmental justice advisors are slated to receive or influence the disbursal of nearly half a billion dollars in grant funding from agencies they advise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":347245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691820710,691825662,691818576,691830998,691829890],"class_list":{"0":"post-347240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-biden-harris-administration","9":"tag-environmental-justice","10":"tag-inflation-reduction-act","11":"tag-mandy-gunasekara","12":"tag-vice-president-kamala-harris","14":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/00hero-desktop.jpg?fit=1480%2C922&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1skE","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":292586,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=292586","url_meta":{"origin":347240,"position":0},"title":"\u201cEnvironmental Justice\u201d $ub$umes Everything","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"25\/12\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"This\u00a0document\u00a0just released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency takes the cake.","rel":"","context":"In \"Biden- Harris - 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