The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is under congressional scrutiny for awarding a $50 million grant to the Climate Justice Alliance, a California nonprofit that has accused Israel of committing genocide and promoted “solidarity protest actions” against the Jewish state.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ranking member Shelley Moore Capito (R., W.Va.) highlighted the EPA’s grant to the Climate Justice Alliance and criticized the group’s anti-Israel activities.
“You could ask yourself, is this group really going to be funding climate—again, cleaning up the water and cleaning up the soil and cleaning up the air? Or are they going to be funding things like the protests they had … weeks ago where several of them were arrested?” Capito questioned.
“Follow the money. We’re going to be doing that in the Environment and Public Works Committee,” she continued. “And I find it rather startling to me that the EPA and this administration are not doing any better research as to where American taxpayers’ dollars are going.”
EPA administrator Michael Regan announced the grant for the Climate Justice Alliance in December, stating it was funded by the “Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking” program established by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Regan said the funding would help address the nation’s most urgent environmental justice issues.
According to the EPA, the Climate Justice Alliance will collaborate with several local partners to use the federal grant for various environmental justice programs. However, the grant was awarded even as the Climate Justice Alliance continued to emphasize its anti-Israel agenda following Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel in early October.
The Washington Free Beacon first reported the EPA’s grant and the Climate Justice Alliance’s anti-Israel actions in late December.
On its website, the Climate Justice Alliance lists its “Free Palestine” actions as one of its three main projects, alongside environmental justice work and climate philanthropy. The group claims that a “free Palestine” is a “climate justice issue” and that achieving climate justice involves supporting a free Palestine.
The group also released a statement accusing the Israeli government of violating international law.
“For generations, Palestinians have been living under a system of apartheid, breathing in toxic air and consuming food grown on soil contaminated by bombs and other tools of destruction,” the statement reads.
“With this newest round of genocidal attacks by Israel on the civilian Palestinian population, that has forced thousands to flee and live without water, food and electricity which is continuously blockaded and shut off, the Israel government has defied international law; President Biden must oppose this,” it continues.
In early November, the group organized a large climate justice rally in solidarity with Palestinians “on the frontlines of genocidal warfare.” Shortly after, it hosted a webinar discussing the connection between climate change and the anti-Israel movement.
Both of these actions took place just weeks before the Biden administration awarded the $50 million environmental justice grant.
The Climate Justice Alliance has also published a collection of artwork and images for use in pro-Palestinian protests. One image shows a Palestinian bulldozer tearing down an Israeli border fence following Hamas’s October attacks. Other images call for “intifada” and quote Assata Shakur, an activist convicted of murdering a New Jersey police officer before fleeing the country in the 1970s.
While the Climate Justice Alliance has received millions of dollars in recent years, the sources of this funding remain largely unclear. The group appears to be affiliated with the Oakland, California-based Movement Strategy Center, which according to Influence Watch often collaborates with socialist organizations.
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One Response
No, stop. It can’t possibly be true. Our beloved government and its pristine agencies would never do anything unethical. As we all learned during Covid, our beloved government is incapable of misleading the gullible American taxpaying sheeple. Merrick Garland is a fraud.