By Kayla Benjamin for The Washington Informer.
Broadcast version by Brett Peveto for Maryland News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Every morning, 70-year-old Al Powell takes long walks on the Sligo Creek Trail, covering miles of well-paved track alongside the burbling water. It’s an incredibly convenient place to walk for Powell: the trail and the creek run right past his home in Hyattsville, where he has lived since 1974. He and his wife, Geeta Powell, can see the path from their backyard.

Most days, the two sit next to each other on the swing bench set up on their back patio and watch folks run, walk and bike on the trail, which sits within Parklawn Park. The daily commitment to—and delight in—his neighborhood’s outdoor space gave Powell cause for alarm when he found out about a proposal to build a 16-pump gas station less than 600 feet from his back door.

Geeta has asthma; Al didn’t want her to breathe in gas fumes day in and day out. He also didn’t want to see the tiny playground right behind the site torn down—a requirement for the Royal Farms gas station to meet zoning standards. For years, the Powells’ five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren have played there during their visits.

Besides, Al Powell said, that intersection—Riggs Road and East-West Highway—already has a gas station, an Exxon across the street. He didn’t need or want another one.

So Powell decided to say something. He joined an effort spearheaded by a handful of residents from the Carole Highlands neighborhood, about a mile northwest, to fight Royal Farms’ proposal. The group organized 11 citizens living nearby to give testimony at a zoning hearing about the project. A little over five months later, on Jan. 12, the company withdrew its zoning application.

By then, the project faced an active group of oppositional residents and the pro bono legal representation they had called in for help, as well as a newly elected County Council hostile to the project. On Monday, that Council voted 9-0 to officially accept the application’s withdrawal, closing the matter for good. 

“Sometimes it feels like these companies, they’re just going to do what they want. But sometimes you can stop things if you put in the effort,” Powell said. 

The lawyer for Royal Farms, Matthew Tedesco, declined to comment for this story, including on why his client, RF East West Hyattsville LLC, decided to withdraw the application. 

‘The More We Learn About the Project, the Worse It Looks’

Walking in a wide loop around the park land surrounding his house, Powell recalled several flooding events he witnessed over the years. In 1976, he said, the creek rose high enough to reach the proposed gas station site. Then on September 10, 2020, severe flooding hit the whole DMV region hard. Near Hyattsville and Chillum, the water flooded homes and tore up roads.

“There were logs rolling down the highway,” Powell said of the 2020 flood. 

In July of this year, Sligo Creek rose to a record seven feet as thunderstorms deluged the region. The East-West Highway/Riggs Road intersection—the site of the proposal—shut down as the creek overflowed its banks.

The southeastern edge of the property that Royal Farms sought fell in the 100-year floodplain. In its current, empty state, the parking lot has no stormwater management. Royal Farms’ site plan included landscaping and grading features aimed at reducing flooding, according to zoning hearing testimony from Joseph DiMarco, a civil engineer who worked on the plans. DiMarco also said that the underground fuel tanks would have been located outside the designated floodplain line. 

Still, area residents remained concerned. 

“Say those tanks don’t leak—you’re still going to have all the other things associated with a fuel filling station. If you’ve ever filled up your car, you know: sometimes you spill, or you’re putting the hose back and it spills,” said Jason Clayton, president of the Carole Highlands Neighborhood Association. “Being in a floodplain, when we get heavy rains, all that stuff is going to wash somewhere, and it’s going to be downhill and into the creek.”

That worry is backed up by research: a 2014 study in the Journal of Contaminant Hydrology examined the extent of chronic, small spills at gas stations and found that the cumulative impact likely added up to “non-negligible human exposure” to harmful chemicals. In general, research has linked living near gas stations to increased risks for childhood leukemia and other cancers, according to a study published in the Journal of Environment Health Science & Engineering in 2021. 

There are more than 20 gas stations within a mile and a half of the proposed Royal Farms, one Carole Highlands resident said in his testimony opposing the proposal.

The main toxin associated with gas stations is benzene, a carcinogenic. The likelihood of benzene to end up in the nearby waterway brought Michael Wilpers, chair of natural history for Friends of Sligo Creek, into the fight. Another gas station less than 300 feet from the creek threatened the plants and animals that lived there, he argued, as well as their human neighbors.

For Wilpers, who lives just across the border in Montgomery County, it was also a question of fairness. Montgomery County’s zoning rules prohibit gas stations designed to sell more than 3.6 million gallons a year from being built within 500 feet of residences, schools, day cares, playgrounds, parks and environmentally sensitive areas—including streams and floodplains. Of that list, the Prince George’s County zoning code only regulates gas station distance from playgrounds and schools.

“This gas station wouldn’t have gotten off first base if they tried to do it in Montgomery County, because it’s not even an inch away from a park—it shares a boundary,” Wilpers said. “Why should animals, plants and people in Prince George’s be exposed to more airborne poisons than people in Montgomery County?”

Ten nearby residents, including Wilpers, Clayton and Powell, presented these arguments in their testimony during the zoning hearing on Aug. 3. Others, including former president of the Carole Highlands Neighborhood Association Jeff Cronin, also pointed out that the project seemed contradictory to the countywide Climate Action Plan adopted by the Prince George’s County Council just this past July. The plan calls for reducing emissions by 50% by 2030 (compared to 2005 levels). 

Cronin first heard about the proposed gas station by accident, during a June 25 walking tour with county planning staff and officials. The tour focused on improving walkability and pedestrian safety in the area; the gas station plan came up in passing. On July 7, Cronin posted a message to the Carole Highlands Neighborhood Association email group about the project and his plans to oppose it. 

“The more we learn about the project the worse it looks, especially from an environmental perspective,” he wrote in a follow-up message on Aug. 1 of last year. 

People living nearby had concerns about several non-environmental issues as well. Powell and others worried about additional traffic at an intersection where they described regularly seeing severe accidents. One Maryland injury law firm listed the spot as one of the top ten most dangerous intersections where it saw repeated collisions throughout Montgomery, Prince George’s, and Charles counties.

Mark Ferguson, who prepared the land planning report for Royal Farms, testified at the hearing that the project would improve traffic safety, because the site plan would close off one access point on East-West Highway and adjust the lanes around the other entrance. He also said that his analysis showed fewer additional trips to the intersection than occur with the present use of the site. 

Powell, who said he sees a traffic incident at the intersection at least once a week, was not convinced. “The traffic would’ve been nasty,” he said. 

Further, no one wanted to lose the playground. The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission had come to the conclusion that the tiny configuration of green slides and yellow monkey bars was “not heavily used,” according to the Technical Staff Report the agency produced. But both Powell and Clayton fondly recalled bringing a child or grandchild to play there. 

Some, including a registered dietitian who testified at the hearing, also argued that gas station food—including fried chicken, burgers and fries—would not serve as a good replacement for the Salvadoran restaurant currently on the site. Cronin pointed out, citing Royal Farms’ own data, that 36% of the company’s store revenue comes from tobacco.

“If this project moves forward… we would trade exercise equipment for children and culinary diversity in exchange for fast food, fossil fuels, and finally, cigarettes,” Cronin said at the zoning hearing. 

Based on the testimony and the technical recommendations of Prince George’s County planning staff, the Zoning Hearing Examiner approved Royal Farms’ request on Oct. 7. 

Cronin and the others had expected as much. They had to decide if they would put in the many extra hours needed to file an appeal—and if they even had a chance to win it.

‘Handed to Them on a Silver Platter’

The site proposed for the new gas station hardly appears, on its face, like a place that would inspire a heated battle. The most striking feature of the strip mall is a big parking lot. 

In over four decades living next door, Powell has seen the site host a number of different occupants, including a Safeway, a Pottery Barn, a plant shop and, most recently, a Rite Aid. Now, a Papa John’s and a highly rated Salvadoran restaurant called Comedor San Alejo fill part of the building, but the rest remains empty.

Few passing motorists would suspect that a well-loved park, complete with a creek, a trail and a playground, lies beyond the mostly-empty building and expanse of asphalt. 

“The status quo isn’t doing anyone any favors,” Cronin said of the spot. 

But when he heard about the project during the pedestrian safety walking tour, Cronin thought that another gas station “would have made everything worse—it’d be bad for the creek and bad for the neighbors.” That’s why he reached out to his own neighborhood association email group. 

A flurry of messages followed Cronin’s initial one, and a smaller group of interested neighborhood association members formed to talk strategy. Within their community, they recruited a professor of urban planning and a registered dietitian to speak on the record, adding an extra layer of credibility to their testimony. 

The group had just over a month between first learning about the proposed gas station and the scheduled zoning hearing, where Royal Farms would argue in favor of its application for a Special Exception. The project required the zoning exception because Prince George’s County does not allow gas stations within 300 feet of playgrounds.

Luckily for Royal Farms, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, a joint agency serving Prince George’s and Montgomery County, had already agreed to remove the playground equipment before construction began. In exchange, Royal Farms would spend up to $400,000—the estimated cost of the playground equipment—on beautification and landscaping in Parklawn Park.

The agency’s Department of Parks and Recreation had been in talks with Royal Farms since at least October 2021, according to an official agreement between the two parties signed in late August of this year. The department staff had determined that the playground was “not heavily used” and that the equipment would “be slated for replacement or removal in the near term” regardless, according to a Jan. 3 memo. 

The playground was almost 40 years old, according to Jeremy Hurlbutt, the planning supervisor for zoning at Prince George’s County Planning Department. Hurlbutt also said that the site’s location within the floodplain meant the county would not likely want to renovate or replace a play area on that spot, gas station or no. 

The Department of Parks and Recreation’s website says that at least 110 out of the 311 playgrounds operated by the county have either passed their useful lifespan. The site lists seven playgrounds with ongoing renovation projects, and four that were completed last year within Prince George’s County. 

Just over half a mile away from the site, on the other side of the Montgomery County border, similar renovations at Hillwood Manor Park’s playground wrapped up just last year. 

“Hillwood Manor was kind of a dumpy park,” said Paul Rowe, another Carole Highlands resident. “They’ve renovated it; they’ve replaced it, actually. And it looks great. That’s what Montgomery County does. It’s like, ‘Well, why don’t you do the same here?’”

The idea of removing the playground to make way for another gas station seemed “patently wrong” to Rowe, who has lived in Carole Highlands for 20 years. He said he wants the Prince George’s County government to push for development besides “liquor stores, gas stations, and convenience stores.”

“We can’t continue to approve these uses,” he said. “We don’t want them in our neighborhood. We want a lot better.”

After seeing Cronin’s post on the neighborhood association’s email group, Rowe became deeply involved with the zoning fight. Before the August hearing, he joined Cronin and a few others for a call with Royal Farms’ lawyers. Rowe knocked on doors along the street closest to the proposal site, eventually recruiting Powell and another neighbor on the same street to speak at the hearing. 

“It seemed incredulous to me and others,” Rowe said, “that the lone obstacle that would prevent something like this from happening was handed to them on a silver platter, so to speak, by the Parks Department in agreeing to demolish the playground.”

A Playground ‘May’ Have Equipment

After the Zoning Hearing Examiner approved Royal Farms’ special exception application, it became clear that the opponents would need legal representation if they wanted to appeal the decision. Rowe began making phone calls. 

He contacted the local Sierra Club chapter, who put him in touch with the Maryland Sierra Club, who, in turn, put him in touch with the University of Maryland Environmental Law Clinic. The program is designed to give law students hands-on experience by providing pro bono services to groups or people in need of legal aid on environmental justice matters.

The students in the law clinic cohort combed through the county zoning ordinances and the Zoning Hearing Examiner’s 41-page decision document to craft a 2,000-word appeal. Their draft included the kinds of legal details that lay people would be hard-pressed to find. For example: one key argument rested on the precise definition of a “playground” in the county’s zoning rules. The ordinance defined a playground as any area used for recreation, especially by children, and said the area “may” have equipment like slides or seesaws.

Removing the equipment, the appeal argued, wouldn’t stop the green space from serving as a place for kids to play. Defined that way, the gas station would have sat unlawfully within 300 feet of “a playground” even if the county demolished the actual structure. 

The community members officially filed the appeal on Nov. 7—the final deadline to submit it. A copy went out to all the parties on the record, including Tedesco, the lawyer for Royal Farms. 

“I don’t think our numbers served as a deterrent [for Royal Farms]. I think coming armed with legal representation did,” Rowe said. 

The director of the law clinic, Seema Kakade, also connected the group with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The huge nonprofit agreed to represent the community members opposing the gas station in oral arguments before the District Council—the next step after filing an appeal. 

But the case never got that far. A month before the scheduled arguments, the company withdrew its application, abandoning a plan it had worked on with the county government for more than a year. 

‘Not a Sustainable Process’

The Royal Farms plan for East-West Highway and Riggs Road officially perished around 10:30 in the morning on Feb. 13. The matter held the first slot on the agenda for the Prince George’s County District Council, which meets twice a month to decide zoning matters. (The District Council is composed of the same people that make up the County Council; the group is called the District Council when deciding zoning and planning matters.) Little fanfare accompanied the 9-0 vote accepting the withdrawal of the special exception application. None of the citizens who had opposed the project attended in person. They knew they’d already won, in large part because the new Council included several more progressive members than the previous one.

Wanika Fisher, the newly elected representative of District 2—which includes the proposal site and the Carole Highlands neighborhood—took a moment to recognize the end of a hard-fought battle. She had heard about the gas station plan from constituents even during her campaign, she said in an interview before the District Council meeting, and she was strongly opposed to it. 

“I vote aye, and I want to thank my community members, especially the Carole Highlands Neighborhood Association and Senator Malcolm Augustine. This project wasn’t totally in line with our community and I’m looking forward to working with the property owner going forward,” she said at the District Council meeting. 

And that was it for the proposal. 

For some of the Carole Highlands residents, though, the experience was an eye opener. Many parts of the process seemed “designed to accommodate this small set of lawyers and lobbyists who advance these proposals and to exclude opponents who aren’t represented by lawyers,” Cronin said. 

To begin with, citizens often have to pay meticulous attention in order to get involved early in the zoning process. Before filing an application for a special exception, Royal Farms sent out some informational mailings, as required by law. Those letters must go to any municipal governments within a mile; community organizations registered with the Prince George’s County Planning Department; all adjoining property owners; and anyone else signed up to be a “party of record.” 

In this case, that meant that Powell—who lives less than 600 feet from the proposal site—did not receive a letter. Royal Farms was not required to contact him or his neighbors about the matter, unless their home sat immediately adjacent to the site’s borders. 

Any Prince George’s County resident can sign up online to receive notifications for future zoning matters within a given zip code. But unless you know what to look for, it can be difficult to spot issues. The letter Royal Farms sent out explained that the company planned to file an application in order to build “a food and beverage store in combination with a gas station” on the site. The note did not mention any plans for the playground or Parklawn Park.

Thirty days before a zoning hearing—which gets scheduled only after the application goes through the Planning Department—developers must post large signage around the site, which Royal Farms did. But the law did not require any signage near the playground or in the park.

“Users of the playground would have had no idea that the bulldozer was coming,” Cronin said.

Even when community members do learn about planning projects early enough to provide their input, the process heavily favors professional litigants. Most regular people will only attend a zoning hearing once or twice in a decade, if that. Developers and their lawyers are in those hearings all the time.

The citizens involved in this zoning matter spent hours of their own time learning what they needed to know in order to mount a defense before the Zoning Hearing Examiner. Once she approved Royal Farms’ application, they spent still more hours preparing to appeal and finding legal representation.

“The only reason these community members were able to have so much information and bring this situation to our attention, is because they set aside their time and consistently refused to be left out of the process,” said Taylor Lilley, the environmental justice attorney at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. 

If Royal Farms had not withdrawn its application, Lilley would have been one of the lawyers representing the citizen opponents at oral arguments in front of the District Council. She said that this case, despite ending in opponents’ favor, illustrates how difficult it can be for communities to make themselves heard in zoning matters—not just in Prince George’s but throughout the United States. 

“That’s not a sustainable process that lets communities have a say in what happens to them, especially in Black and brown communities, and low-income communities where people might not have the time to say, ‘outside of my nine to five, I want to be a zoning activist.'”

Sitting at a small table in Comedor San Alejo, the Salvadoran restaurant at the proposal site, Powell spoke about his role in speaking out against the gas station in between bites of beef taco. It’s clear that he—like most people—didn’t set out to become a zoning activist. He just wanted clean air for his wife and a safe place for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren to play.

“They like the slides,” he said, laughing.


Kayla Benjamin wrote this article for The Washington Informer.


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A new report found fossil fuel lobbyists in two states with strong transparency and disclosure laws were not making full disclosures, including Washington state.

Washington ranked eighth in the country with a "C-plus" in the report from F Minus, an advocacy group tracking fossil-fuel lobbying across the nation. The audit found fossil fuel lobbyists in Washington state made disclosures only 8% of the time.

James Browning, founder and executive director of F Minus, said the lobbyists frequently work for both fossil fuel and climate advocacy groups.

"Refusing to disclose their work for oil and gas companies shows that they're keenly aware that this can be bad for their image, that they can be seen as villains on climate and that's bad for business," Browning contended. "It's bad for their image."

Browning pointed to the Pacific Whale Watch Association and Chevron sharing a lobbying firm.

Browning noted the audit from F Minus has been sent to the state's public disclosure commission but he has not heard back. He was encouraged when the Public Disclosure Commission in October started asking lobbyists what legislation they worked on. However, preliminary filings are only slightly better, he added. In fact, Browning pointed out one lobbyist has been copying and pasting the same disclosure for all of its fossil fuel lobbying since 2018.

"Clearly the lobbyists don't take this seriously," Browning asserted. "It's really outrageous given the cascading climate impacts in Washington state; extreme heat, fires and just the fear we all have to live with of the climate crisis."

In the report, 27 states received failing grades over the transparency of their lobbyist disclosure laws.

By Kristoffer Tigue, Dennis Pillion, Dylan Baddour and Marianne Lavelle for Inside Climate News.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

When a rare tornado swept through the north side of Minneapolis, Michelle Neal scrambled for cover at a fast-food restaurant. "It was unreal-we could have died," she told Minnesota Public Radio. "McDonald's saved me."

It's the kind of scenario that Julia Nerbonne, executive director of Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light, wants to make sure communities are better prepared for as climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather. The faith-based nonprofit hopes to transform churches and other congregations into emergency shelters with solar power and battery storage to withstand power outages-especially in historically disadvantaged communities, like north Minneapolis, which have long been overburdened by pollution and underinvestment.

"We want to have a building," she said, "in which they can have a cooling place, in which they can refrigerate their medication-a place where they can be with the community in the midst of a crisis."

Around the country, nonprofits and other community organizations like Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light were hoping these sorts of projects would receive funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has $3 billion to spend on environmental justice community grants through Sept. 30, 2026. But the Biden administration has only been able to award about half the money so far, and experts say the unspent 50 percent can most likely be clawed back by President-elect Donald Trump-a blow to communities of color and poor rural communities that had long waited for help like this.

Among the threatened initiatives is the EPA's Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program, which dedicated $600 million in block grants for projects aimed at tackling climate and environmental justice issues in disadvantaged communities. The money has been hailed by advocates as one of the most important federal investments ever made in closing the nation's long-standing socioeconomic and racial gaps.

The Biden administration has so far awarded nearly $266 million, according to an EPA database, leaving more than half-or just over $334 million-vulnerable to reversal efforts from Trump officials or Republican lawmakers. "EPA continues to work through its rigorous process to obligate the funds under the Inflation Reduction Act, including the Thriving Communities Grantmakers program," said Nick Conger, the EPA's communications director.

Last week, the EPA opened up the first round of applications for the Thriving Communities program, giving hopeful applicants like Nerbonne less than two months to navigate the complicated federal grantmaking process before Trump is sworn in. In fact, several EPA regions have yet to open their application processes, leaving some groups worried they won't be able to complete their applications on time.

"It just seems like an incredibly missed opportunity. I'd feel disappointed about that," Nerbonne said, when asked how she would feel if the program's funding was rescinded under Trump. "Congregations aren't talking about politics. They're ready to get to work serving their community and they're tired of politics, especially after this election."

Republicans Target Environmental Justice Funding

The IRA's idea for addressing historic environmental injustice through a community grant program was taken from the sprawling Environmental Justice for All legislation originally introduced in 2020 by Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz) and the late Rep. A. Donald McEachin (D-Va.).

"We approached it with the fundamental belief that communities know what communities need best," said Grijalva in an email.

But Congressional Republicans have been vocal about their intention to cut or limit the environmental justice grant program, characterizing it as a form of cronyism, providing support to political allies of Democrats and opponents of fossil fuels.

"The EPA is awarding taxpayer dollars to special interest groups committed to a radical energy agenda," wrote U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) in a House Energy and Commerce Committee report, released just before Election Day. "Enriching nonprofit organizations to spread radical, left-leaning ideology is an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars. These programs demand rigorous scrutiny and meticulous oversight."

Trump himself suggested in a 2023 campaign video that he could "simply choke off the money" allocated under the Inflation Reduction Act.

Typically, Congress would have to pass new "rescission" legislation to take away unspent money that Congress previously appropriated. Republicans could use the appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2025, which began in October and now appears likely to be in the hands of the newly elected Congress and Trump, to do so. But in order to avoid the threat of a filibuster in the Senate, they instead could use a budget reconciliation bill that only needs a simple majority-the approach Democrats used to pass the IRA. Republicans are aiming to embark on a reconciliation bill soon after taking office in order to extend and expand Trump's 2017 tax cuts.

Ending environmental justice grantmaking is also part of the vision laid out in Project 2025, the policy roadmap that conservative groups drew up for Trump's second term. Although Trump professed no familiarity with Project 2025 during the campaign, he has named authors of the plan to key positions in his new administration, including tapping Russell Vought, his former budget chief, to head the Office of Management and Budget again. Project 2025 called for pausing and reviewing all environmental justice grants in light of the Supreme Court's recent decisions against affirmative action.

The Thriving Communities grant program has become a particular target of Republicans, who singled out one of its recipients and accused it of being "radical" and "anti-American." The Climate Justice Alliance, a California-based organization, is one of 11 regional grantmaker organizations that were initially awarded $50 million each from the Thriving Communities program. Those groups would then disseminate $40 million of their funds as subgrants to community organizations in their regions.

The Climate Justice Alliance is the only regional grantmaker that has not received any of its funding, sparking speculation that GOP rancor could be to blame. In May, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), the highest ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, criticized the group for its support of Palestinians in Gaza and its opposition to Israel, calling its members "radical," "anti-American," and "antisemitic."

Conger, the EPA spokesperson, said the "EPA continues to review the grant for the Climate Justice Alliance," but provided no further details.

KD Chavez, the Climate Justice Alliance's executive director, said that the group's pro-Gaza advocacy is constitutionally protected speech that is separate from the work it would fund under the Thriving Communities program. "This grant money would only be used as intended by Congress, going towards things like air quality and asthma, water quality and lead, asbestos contamination," she said.

If the group's political views are the reason for the holdup in funding, Chavez said it could put at risk any social justice or progressive work that receives federal funding. "This could really be setting up a horrific First Amendment precedent moving forward for any type of organization across civil society," Chavez said.

Other groups involved in the EPA grant program pushed back against the GOP attacks as well. In addition to the 11 regional grantmaker organizations, another 18 institutions were chosen to act as technical assistance centers-known officially as Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers, or TCTACs-to help community organizations navigate the often complicated federal grant application process.

Bonnie Keeler, a University of Minnesota public affairs associate professor who runs the Midwest region's TCTAC, said it's a misrepresentation of her center's work to say it channels federal funding to "left-leaning activist or extremist organizations," adding that the program deserves broad bipartisan support.

"The TCTACs do not advance a particular policy agenda, we respond to requests for assistance wherever they come from," Keeler said. "To date, we have responded to over 400 requests for technical assistance from urban, rural and tribal communities seeking assistance with everything from energy efficiency goals, to cleaning up brownfields, to managing hazardous waste, to reducing indoor air pollution."

How Far Will Trump Go?

In the early 1970s, then-President Richard Nixon had a problem. A Democratic-controlled Congress wanted to fund highway improvements, drug rehabilitation and a number of other initiatives that the Republican president believed were "undisciplined" and "fiscally irresponsible."

So Nixon decided to withhold funds in the budget that he didn't agree with, sparking a constitutional struggle that resulted in the passage of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act. That law, which is still in effect today, prohibits a president or other government officials from refusing to release congressionally appropriated funds and essentially substituting their own funding decisions for those of Congress.

The legislation also defines when federal funding has been "obligated," a legal term for when a contract has been signed between a federal agency and the recipient of federal funds, such as an organization applying for a grant, said Jeremy Kalin, a finance attorney for the law firm Avisen Legal. That means the $266 million dedicated to environmental justice under the Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress passed in 2022, and already obligated is protected from being rescinded, Kalin said.

But legal experts, including Kalin, aren't sure if Trump and his officials will respect that federal law and refrain from trying to seize or rescind obligated funds, pointing to statements made by Trump and Vought.

Vought and members of right-wing think tanks he is associated with have argued that the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 is unconstitutional, saying that Article II of the Constitution, which obligates the president to "faithfully execute" the law, also allows a president to forbid enforcement of the law.

Trump appears to agree with that interpretation. In a statement announcing Vought's nomination last week, Trump bragged about Vought's experience as a deregulator, saying, "Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government."

"Russell Vought," Kalin said, "may stretch the bounds of the Impoundment Control Act ... and just force people to stop it through the courts."

If that's the case, Kalin said, some funds-even those protected as "obligated" funds under the Impoundment Control Act-may be subject to reversals by the Trump administration, and only funds that get fully dispersed to organizations before Trump takes office may be safe from those efforts.

Trump has already tested this theory. During his first term in office, he withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine while pressuring President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to open a corruption investigation into Joe Biden and his family. The U.S. Government Accountability Office, or GAO, later ruled that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act.

Trump will have an opportunity to appoint a new head of GAO next year when the 15-year term of the current Comptroller General ends, giving him a chance to choose who will have direct oversight of any decisions he makes to withhold funding.

If Trump decides to withhold funds, it will most certainly trigger legal fights that could go all the way to the Supreme Court. The high court has never directly weighed in on the subject, however, but the court's conservative majority has indicated it is willing to take an expansive view on presidential power.

"Time Is Just Not on the Side of the Grantees"

The short amount of time, roughly seven weeks, before Trump takes office, could also be discouraging some community groups from applying for federal environmental justice grants at all. In some cases, nonprofits see it as a reason to rely less on federal support to do their work.

Caleb Roberts applied for a $1.5 million grant earlier in November from another IRA-funded environmental justice program. He hoped to use the money to hire more employees at his nonprofit, Dallas-based Downwinders at Risk, to conduct door-to-door screenings to check residents' homes for conditions that cause asthma. But now he's unsure he'll ever see that money.

"We think we'll definitely run into some funding issues," he said. "Starting day one after inauguration, those things are probably under fire."

Another nonprofit, Alabama-based We Matter Community Association, said it plans to apply for a Thriving Communities grant to purchase 1,200 acres of land in the city of Prichard, on which it plans to build community amenities, including a community center, athletic fields, commercial space and affordable housing. But Carletta Davis, the group's president, said the organization will likely rely less on federal support in the future.

"[The election] is the reason why We Matter is really solely focused on trying to create a way to sustain itself without having to go through governmental grants," she said. "I think that our model is probably going to be the model going forward for EJ organizations."

Some organizations aren't sure if applying for a federal environmental justice grant is worth the effort at all. Applications for the Thriving Communities grant program, the largest single program of federal environmental justice block grants, haven't even opened in the EPA-designated area that includes Texas and Louisiana, home to the nation's largest petrochemical complexes and environmental justice communities.

"At this time, the groups we know of that may be interested still need more time to understand the grant program and whether they will apply," said Vanessa Toro Barragán, a senior program officer at the Houston-based Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, which isn't involved with the grant program.

But time may not be a luxury community groups can afford at the moment, should Trump officials and Republican lawmakers follow through with their threats.

Employees of organizations that work closely with the Thriving Communities program, also expressed concern that community groups would struggle to complete a complicated federal grant application before Trump takes office in just seven weeks, agreeing to comment anonymously to safeguard their prospects as potential grantees.

"Time is just not on the side of the grantees," one employee told Inside Climate News.

Still, organizations involved with the federal grant programs are encouraging community groups to apply and hope to see a big turnout.

"The fact is that this program, it still exists, and it doesn't make sense to turn away from an opportunity that is still there while it is still there," said Chandra Taylor-Sawyer, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, one of the partner organizations helping to recruit applicants to the Thriving Communities program.

Keeler, who runs the Midwest technical assistance center at the University of Minnesota, expressed a similar sentiment. "The future of these programs is uncertain," she said. "That said, all we can do is continue the work we've started. We get new requests for support every week and we'll keep responding to those requests for technical assistance as long as we are able."


Kristoffer Tigue, Dennis Pillion, Dylan Baddour and Marianne Lavelle wrote this article for Inside Climate News.


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A new report says fossil-fuel lobbyists in two states with strong transparency and disclosure laws are not making full disclosures - including in Maryland.

Maryland ranks seventh in the country and gets a grade of C-plus in the report from a group called F Minus - which tracks fossil-fuel lobbying efforts across the U.S.

James Browning, executive director of F Minus, said Maryland has strong laws requiring lobbyists to disclose their salaries and the bills they're working on.

But its audit found these disclosures are being made less than 50% of the time. Browning said some lobbyists also appear to have major conflicts of interest.

"What we also found is this rampant culture of lobbyists being sort of double agents for oil and gas companies," said Browning, "at the same time they're working for climate-conscious institutions."

Browning pointed to Johns Hopkins University's lobbying firm actively opposing a climate bill on behalf of the American Petroleum Institute. The lobbying firm didn't disclose that conflict.

Browning said the audit from F Minus has been sent to the state's ethics commission. He said he hopes that will spur additional audits on lobbying practices in the state.

He added that new policies on reporting would help keep their activities during legislative sessions transparent.

"There has to be a reality check in the middle of Maryland's three-month session - let's say at the end of February - where everyone has to disclose what they're doing," said Browning. "The way the law is written now, lobbyists can wait until May. The session is over in April."

Twenty-seven states received failing grades in the report for the overall lack of transparency in their lobbyist disclosure laws.



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