The Trump administration terminated $20 billion in grants the Biden administration awarded last year to eight environmental nonprofits, citing concerns over fraud, waste, and abuse.

EPA administrator Lee Zeldin notified grant recipients of the action Tuesday evening and explained in an announcement that incidents of misconduct, conflicts of interest, and potential fraud related to the funding posed an unacceptable risk to taxpayers. The action came after a comprehensive internal review and is consistent with separate ongoing federal investigations spearheaded by the Department of Justice and FBI, Zeldin said.

“EPA has determined that these deficiencies pose an unacceptable risk to the efficient and lawful execution of this grant that cannot be remedied by imposing specific conditions, necessitating immediate termination to safeguard taxpayer funds and ensure compliance with federal financial assistance regulations,” Zeldin wrote in letters to the groups obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

“EPA is committed to ensuring that federal funding is administered in a manner that upholds transparency, accountability, and the highest standards of fiscal responsibility,” he continued. “This termination reflects the agency’s duty to protect public funds and maintain the integrity of its grant programs.”

The termination of the grants—awarded under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program, which was created by former president Joe Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act to fund various green energy projects—is a significant escalation in the EPA’s efforts to both trim Biden-era spending and gut existing left-wing climate initiatives. Zeldin’s previous cuts to Biden-era programs garnered about $1.7 billion in taxpayer savings, meaning Tuesday’s action multiplies that figure by nearly 12 times.

Grant recipients, though, are expected to vigorously defend the funding—the two largest recipients of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants, the Climate United Fund and the Coalition for Green Capital, filed lawsuits in federal court over the last week to defend their grants. If the grants are successfully terminated, it could be fatal for the recipients, many of which were founded in order to secure the funding.

“Climate United does not have other committed sources of funding to replace the grant funds,” Climate United wrote in its complaint. “Without those grant funds, Climate United will shortly run out of cash to pay operating expenses—it will no longer be able to pay its employees, pay rent, pay critical service providers and contractors, or meet its commitments under the loans and awards it has already approved.”

EPA lawyers are expected to appear in court as soon as Wednesday in relation to the litigation.

Zeldin’s announcement comes after the Free Beacon reported that one of the eight recipients of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants was a brand new nonprofit linked to perennial Georgia Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams. That group, Power Forward Communities, received $2 billion to replace gas-powered appliances with electric alternatives in low-income communities nationwide.

The Free Beacon also reported that Jahi Wise, the former director of the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund office, oversaw the $5 billion grant to the Coalition for Green Capital, where he served as policy director before joining the Biden administration.

Zeldin’s team, meanwhile, discovered that Biden officials parked the $20 billion pot of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program funding at an outside financial institution, Citibank, in a first-of-its-kind move for the EPA. Zeldin warned that the move reduced the federal government’s ability to conduct oversight of the grants.

“EPA will be an exceptional steward of taxpayer dollars dedicated to our core mission of protecting human health and the environment, not a frivolous spender in the name of ‘climate equity,'” Zeldin said in a statement Tuesday evening.

The post Trump Admin Terminates $20B in Biden Climate Funding Over Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Concerns appeared first on .

Brown University’s Choices Program develops history and current issues curricula for K-12 schools in all 50 states. Once upon a time, it taught students “of the historic Jewish ties to the land that is now Israel.” But its recent materials are more critical of the Jewish state—and Brown’s endowed chair of Palestinian studies, Beshara Doumani, was involved in crafting them.

Doumani, our Adam Kredo reports, began contributing to the program in 2015. Brown thanked him at the time for his “invaluable” contributions. The program’s Middle East curriculum materials include new definitions of “colonialism” and “imperialism,” exclude an old section on Israel’s creation, and teach students that Israel’s capital is Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem.

“Brown has dismissed accusations of anti-Semitism in the program’s curriculum materials in the past, arguing that it has a commitment to ‘help educators guide thoughtful consideration of diverse views,'” writes Kredo. Doumani has a different view, arguing during a 2016 panel discussion that academics must reject the “CNN-style ‘this is your story, this is my story, let’s recognize the humanity of each other’ approach because it ignores Israel’s status ‘as a settler colonial project.’”

READ MORE: How a Brown University Professor Helped Drive Anti-Israel Materials Into K-12 Schools

In some cases, Columbia students don’t have to go to class this week thanks to professors who canceled in solidarity with Mahmoud Khalil. That may explain why some of them took to the New York City streets on Tuesday to protest Khalil’s arrest.

Agitators clashed with police after they refused to clear a roadway in front of City Hall. They were arrested. Attendees included Aidan Parisi, the Columbia graduate student who was arrested for storming Hamilton Hall and suspended for organizing a panel full of terror-tied speakers who advocated for violence against Jews.

Other attendees sported terrorist headbands and signs. They acted as part of a nationwide “walkout” in support of Khalil, whose student group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, lauded Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack—or the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” as the group called it—as a “moral, military and political victory.” Participating schools included the City University of New York, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

READ MORE: Anti-Israel Agitators Arrested in Amid Protests Over Pro-Hamas Activist’s ICE Arrest

The Democratic Party has been in a state of disarray during Donald Trump’s second term. On Monday night, their journalist friends followed suit, unloading on Politico’s “Kamala Harris expert” turned MSNBC cohost Eugene Daniels for his floundering leadership of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

Daniels hosted a virtual meeting of the embattled organization, our Andrew Stiles reports, and faced pointed questions from members for his “failure to respond more aggressively” to Trump’s stripping of the association’s power. He blew off those questions, according to April Ryan, White House correspondent for something called Black Press USA. He also refused to step down as WHCA president.

“Daniels published his final ‘scoop’ at Politico last week about how Harris was seriously considering taking the steps she needs to take in terms of thinking about running for governor of California in 2026,” writes Stiles. “Daniels has commended himself for his ‘tough’ coverage of the Harris campaign, including the time he asked the failed candidate if she thought Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance were guilty of ‘irredeemable racism.'”

READ MORE: Journalists in Disarray: WHCA President Eugene Daniels Refuses to Step Down Amid Accusations of Incompetence

Away from the Beacon:

• In a statement calling for the release of Mahmoud Khalil, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said he has made his “criticism of the antisemitic actions at Columbia loudly known.” In real life, he advised Columbia’s leaders that backlash over those actions was “really only among Republicans.”
• Cairo-based Washington Post reporter Heba Farouk Mahfouz once tweeted that while she doesn’t “like Hamas’s social suppression of the Palestinians,” she is “always and forever with the resistance as long as it is against the Zionist entity.” Jeff Bezos, call your office.
• School’s out for spring: Department of Education staffers received a notice on Tuesday “informing them that all department offices … will be closed Wednesday,” according to CBS News. Roughly half of their positions are reportedly expected to be eliminated.
• Jake Sullivan might not have a security clearance but he does have a Harvard Kennedy School professorship on “the Practice of Statecraft and World Order,” the Harvard Crimson reported.

The post Brown University Trains Tomorrow’s Israel Haters, #FreeMahmoud Protest Turns Testy, and Liberal Journos Unload on MSNBC’s New Star appeared first on .

In 2011, Brown University’s Choices Program, which develops curriculum on history and current issues for K-12 schools in all 50 states, taught high school students “of the historic Jewish ties to the land that is now Israel.” In 2015, anti-Israel academic Beshara Doumani, then a founding director of Brown’s Center for Middle East Studies, began advising the program—and the materials shifted in tone.

That year, the Choices Program released a revamped version of its unit titled, “The Middle East in Transition: Questions for U.S. Policy.” The unit, which included an acknowledgment of Doumani’s “invaluable” contributions, provided students with new definitions of “colonialism” and “imperialism,” according to an Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) review of the curriculum materials obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. It also included a map that listed Tel Aviv—not Jerusalem—as Israel’s capital.

Two years later, an updated edition of the same unit went further. Included alongside the map of Middle Eastern capitals was a quiz calling on students to “fill in the missing countries and capitals below.” Students received credit for writing “Israel” next to the listed “Country Capital” of Tel Aviv. The unit also eliminated a section on Israel’s creation, according to the ISGAP review, “instead moving the discussion about Israel’s creation to a few brief paragraphs within the section titled ‘Israel and the Palestinian Territories.'” 

Around the same time, in December 2017, Brown’s Choices Program uploaded videos meant to supplement its Middle East materials. They referred to Israelis as “colonizing people,” argued Palestinians are not “fundamentally anti-Semitic,” and referred to Gazans as “occupied people” who “live for the most part as refugees.” By 2019, the program’s unit on Iran—which previously referred to Hezbollah as a “labelled terrorist organization” and noted Tehran’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map”—instead called Hezbollah a “militant group,” the ISGAP review found. One year later, Brown named Doumani the inaugural Mahmoud Darwish Chair of Palestinian Studies, making him the first endowed chair in the field at any U.S. university.

While anti-Semitism in higher education has driven headlines in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack, it has reared its head in public K-12 districts as well. Doumani’s work for the Choices Program reflects the overlap between the two issues. Each year, an estimated one million students use the program’s curriculum materials, which were taught in roughly 8,000 high schools in recent years.

Brown has dismissed accusations of anti-Semitism in the program’s curriculum materials in the past, arguing that it has a commitment to “help educators guide thoughtful consideration of diverse views” and present “strongly opposing points of view and then ask students to evaluate them and develop their own questions and conclusions.”

Doumani, however, has a different view of how Israel should be taught and understood. In a 2016 panel discussion held at Brown, he explicitly rejected the “CNN-style ‘this is your story, this is my story, let’s recognize the humanity of each other and then find some sort of a solution that we both can live with,” arguing that such an approach ignores Israel’s status “as a settler colonial project.”

“I think it’s important to explain that this is not a debate. And it’s not meant to be a debate,” Doumani said during the panel, titled, “Suffocating Embrace? The Futures of Palestinians in Israel.”

“This is a really critical conversation,” he continued. “Israel cannot be understood properly unless the features of it as a settler colonial project are understood.”

Doumani, who did not respond to a request for comment, has long driven anti-Israel activism in academia. 

He has expressed support for the academic boycott of Israeli universities, and his Center for Middle East Studies last year hosted Francesca Albanese, the United Nations official who defended Hamas’s actions on Oct. 7 and accused Israel of “genocidal violence.” When Brown’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter drafted its own statement blaming the terror attack on Israel’s “settler colonial regime of apartheid” and expressing “solidarity with the Palestinian resistance,” its members suggested sending the statement to Doumani for his review, the Free Beacon reported at the time. 

From 2021 to 2023, meanwhile, Doumani served as president of Birzeit University, a Palestinian school that bills itself as “a thorn in the side of the occupation” and hosts military parades honoring Hamas.

“Doumani’s department, the Middle East Studies department as a whole, is the core of the anti-Israel movement here at Brown,” one Jewish student at the Ivy League institution said. “Anyone out on the main green protesting or leading any movement against Israel is ingrained within the department.”

For the ISGAP, the Choices Program curriculum—and Doumani’s role in crafting them—should prompt K-12 schools to review their use of the materials.

“There is no indication that Brown University ever communicated Doumani’s new pedagogical strategy to the thousands of schools with which it contracted under the Choices Program,” the organization wrote in its report. “Nor is there any reason to believe that the ‘academic freedom’ that ostensibly exists in university settings to present a counterpoint to Professor Doumani’s views would naturally carry over to the K-12 setting.”

Brown is one of the 60 universities under federal investigation for its alleged failure “to protect Jewish students on campus.” On Monday, the Department of Education sent the school a letter warning of “potential enforcement actions.”  

Brown appears to be taking the threat seriously. A spokesman for the school, Brian Clark, said Brown is “committed to preventing discrimination and harassment based on shared ancestry, including antisemitism and islamophobia, in all of its activities.”

“We are also committed to academic freedom as fundamentally important to our mission of education and research—in accordance with that commitment, we actively seek a diverse range of perspectives and viewpoints,” Clark told the Free Beacon.

The post How a Brown University Professor Helped Drive Anti-Israel Materials Into K-12 Schools appeared first on .

Several anti-Israel agitators were arrested in New York on Tuesday after clashing with police during a protest against the detainment of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student activist and foreign national whom the Trump administration moved to deport over his pro-Hamas campus organizing. It was part of a nationwide student and faculty walkout at several elite colleges across the nation.

BREAKING: Mass arrests outside NYC City Hall as Pro-Palestine Protesters refuse to leave the roadway as they marched against Mahmoud Khalil arrest.

Video by @yyeeaahhhboiii2 @FreedomNTV Desk@freedomnews.tv to license pic.twitter.com/vsUyTjUEWV

— Oliya Scootercaster (@ScooterCasterNY) March 11, 2025

NYPD moved in after the protesters refused to clear the roadway in front of City Hall. Agitators pushed back, and police began making arrests.

Among the crowd was Aidan Parisi, a Columbia graduate student who was arrested for storming Hamilton Hall last year. He was suspended last spring over his involvement in an event that featured a number of terror-tied speakers who advocated for violence against Jews. Also in attendance was Barnard College student and anti-Israel activist Maryam Iqbal, who was arrested with Parisi during last spring’s illegal encampments at Columbia.

The crowd first gathered at Washington Square Park before marching to City Hall as part of a protest organized by New York University’s Faculty and Students for Justice in Palestine chapters and joined by the anti-Semitic group Within Our Lifetime. During the event, billed as a “rally against compliance with fascist policies,” hundreds chanted in unison, “We want justice, you say how, release Mahmoud Khalil now.”

One attendee sported a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine headband, while others displayed posters of militants holding AK-47s with the caption “Palestine will be free.”

Spotted at this protest organized by several student and faculty groups at NYU (including SJP, FSJP, SDS, and others): A PFLP headband and posters promoting armed “resistance” (aka violent terrorism).

cc: @DHSgov @StateDept https://t.co/WNNcnL90d4 pic.twitter.com/vT8IF998xZ

— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) March 11, 2025

“By resistance … we mean action. We mean taking to the streets, mobilizing in our thousands, no, in our millions, and dealing blow after blow to our enemies,” one agitator told the crowd.

NOW: NYU students and protesters stage a WALK OUT in NYC to protest against ICE arrest of Former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil.

Video by @olgafe_images @FreedomNTV Desk@freedomnews.tv to license pic.twitter.com/e0jTYKhGEJ

— Oliya Scootercaster (@ScooterCasterNY) March 11, 2025

At Columbia, a smaller crowd of about 40 faculty and students walked out of their classes and assembled outside the Low Memorial Library. Similar walkouts were staged at the City University of New York, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles—most of which have faced anti-Semitism in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack. National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP)—an anti-Israel group accused of providing material support to Hamas—urged the protests, calling on “individuals to walk out of class, take over central spaces on campus, and assert our mass power” on Tuesday.

“In the face of the state’s existential attacks on the Student Movement and popular education, we declare that we, the united students, faculty, staff, and workers, are the university,” NSJP posted to Instagram on Monday. “The popular movement against Zionism, imperialism, and fascism will not shy away in the face of federal threats; we will show our Board of Trustees, administrators, and the state that we will not back down.”

At Columbia, protesters wore shirts and held signs sporting slogans like “FUCK ICE” and “PIGS ARE NOT KOSHER.” Among the crowd was Joseph Howley, a Columbia classics professor and member of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP). Also in attendance was Bruce Robbins, a Columbia humanities professor who falsely denied that protesters at the encampment chanted for the “destruction of civilian lives.”

The crowd sang the “Ruth Song,” which agitators also crooned the evening the New York Police Department cleared Hamilton Hall after a mob stormed it. They also chanted, “Free Mahmoud,” and “Immigrants are welcome here.” The protesters called out the interim Columbia president, chanting, “We will never let this slide, Katrina Armstrong you can’t hide” and “Katrina Armstrong what do you say, how many boots did you lick today.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition (CPSC) (@columbia.psc)

Aharon Dardik, a founding member of the anti-Israel student group CU Jews4Ceasefire, which condemned Columbia’s Hillel for hosting an exclusive event with former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett last week, led the crowd in prayer to bring Khalil home safely, a protest attendee told the Washington Free Beacon.

One demonstrator asked bystanders to bring the protesters food, water, and sunscreen since they were exposed to the “very hot sun,” a witness told the Free Beacon. “We need that support from our communities so if you are someone who has access to those things, please pull up and help us!”

Khalil was taken into ICE custody Saturday night after the Trump administration pulled his visa and green card.

“This should serve as a warning to foreign students on temporary status in America—under this administration, if you support terror groups, we will deport you,” a State Department official told the Free Beacon. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a similar statement on Sunday, saying he will “be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”

President Donald Trump issued his own statement Monday, declaring Khalil’s detention marks “the first arrest of many to come.”

That same day, a federal judge paused deportation proceedings pending a ruling on a petition Khalil filed in court claiming there was “no basis” for his arrest and subsequent detention.

In April, Khalil spearheaded negotiations with Columbia administrators during the pro-Hamas student encampments, representing Columbia University Apartheid Divest—the Ivy League institution’s most anti-Semitic student organization—and demanding divestment from Israel. He pledged further unrest in the buildup to the fall semester, telling The Hill he would continue to push Columbia to divest from the Jewish state by “any available means necessary.”

“And we’ve been working all this summer on our plans, on what’s next to pressure Columbia to listen to the students and to decide to be on the right side of history,” Khalil said in August. “We’re considering a wide range of actions throughout the semester, encampments and protests and all of that. But for us, encampment is now our new base.”

Last week, Khalil again served as a negotiator for CUAD after a mob of radical Columbia activists stormed a Barnard library. Once inside the building, the agitators distributed Hamas propaganda meant to justify Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack. A week earlier, CUAD stormed a separate campus building at Barnard, resulting in the hospitalization of a security guard and $30,000 in damages.

On Monday at least three Columbia professors canceled in-person classes in support of Khalil, the Free Beacon reported. English professor Joseph Albernaz, philosophy lecturer Ruairidh MacLeod, and an unnamed third emailed students to cancel courses or remove attendance requirements. MacLeod ditched the “discussion requirement for [his] Marx class,” citing “sensitivity to the situation arising from the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil.” Albernaz went as far as to give every student an “A” on an upcoming midterm scheduled for Thursday, saying he was “sickened at the news of the ICE detainment of a student.” The third instructor canceled courses for the rest of the week, arguing it was “unsafe to continue teaching as usual.”

Columbia did not respond to a request for comment.

The post Anti-Israel Agitators Arrested in New York Amid Nationwide Walkouts Protesting Pro-Hamas Activist’s ICE Arrest appeared first on .

The House of Representatives on Tuesday voted 217-213 to approve a stopgap funding bill to keep federal agencies running for the next six months, staving off a partial government shutdown while cutting overall spending by around $7 billion.

The vote was mostly along party lines, with one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden (Maine), voting for the bill and one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), voting against. The bill cuts non-defense discretionary funding by $13 billion while increasing defense spending by $6 billion to fund warship construction and a pay raise for junior military personnel, Reuters reported.

The bill now heads to the Senate, where it will need the support of at least eight Democrats to pass.

The House bill comes as President Donald Trump works to rein in government waste. Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, says its cost-cutting measures have saved taxpayers an estimated $55 billion since Trump’s inauguration. Musk’s team is also reviewing the Pentagon’s $890 billion budget, which accounts for around half of all federal discretionary spending.

This bill, however, excludes DOGE’s proposed cuts, which House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) said Republicans will incorporate in next fiscal year’s budget. It also preserves funding for major spending programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

In addition to cutting funding, the House bill also strips more than $1 billion from Washington, D.C.’s budget for the remainder of the fiscal year. D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser (D.) protested the bill outside the Capitol on Monday, arguing the cuts are “not savings for the federal government” but “simply damage to the District.”

The post House Passes Funding Bill To Avert Government Shutdown, Slash Spending by $7 Billion appeared first on .

Nearly 70 percent of voters in battleground districts see congressional Democrats as out of touch, prioritizing political correctness over real issues, according to a poll released Tuesday.

Only 39 percent of voters believe Democrats have the right priorities, while 69 percent say Democrats are “too focused on being politically correct,” a poll by the Democratic group Navigator Research found. The survey, conducted in 62 swing districts, also showed that more than half of voters think the Democratic Party is “elitist” and does not share their values.

The findings come as Democrats still struggle to regain their footing nearly two months into President Donald Trump’s second term. House Democrats are set to hear from one of the poll’s researchers at a Wednesday conference as they work to rebuild the party’s image ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, Politico reported.

“The Democratic brand is still not where it needs to be in terms of core trust and understanding people’s challenges,” said Molly Murphy, a Democratic strategist who worked on the Tuesday poll, adding that “criticism of Trump doesn’t translate into trust in Democrats.”

While the Democratic Party has long sought to brand itself as the working-class party, for example, less than 40 percent of those polled think the party truly values work, with 56 percent saying Democrats are not looking out for working people.

Murphy acknowledged the disconnect, saying, “How can you care about working people if you don’t care about work? It’s going to be really hard in the midterms if voters don’t think we care about work.”

Democrats also trail Republicans on the economy, 41 percent to 46 percent, according to the poll. Only 27 percent of independents, meanwhile, think Democrats prioritize people like them, while 55 percent say the party is more focused on others.

The post Poll: Overwhelming Majority of Voters Say Dems Are Out of Touch and ‘Elitist’ appeared first on .

MSNBC hired another partisan journalist on Tuesday. Catherine Rampell, the Washington Post columnist best known for praising former second gentleman and home-wrecking nanny handler Doug Emhoff as a “modern-day sex symbol,” will soon cohost a new weekend show on the liberal network alongside Hamas apologist Ayman Mohyeldin.

“Move over, Ryan Gosling. The modern female fantasy is embodied by the man who might soon become our first First Gentleman,” Rampell wrote in August 2024. “Emhoff appears to be a genuine mensch with an impressive career. He’s smitten with his wife and supports her ambitions, as is obvious from his convention speech and their sweet interactions on the campaign trail. But most important for this sexy sobriquet: Emhoff is secure enough with his own masculinity to sometimes prioritize his wife’s ambitions over his own. What. A. Hunk.”

Rampell dismissed Emhoff’s “previous marital drama” as irrelevant, referring to reports that Emhoff destroyed his first marriage by sleeping with his children’s nanny and getting her pregnant. He was also accused of slapping an ex-girlfriend and of fostering a toxic workplace environment at his corporate law firm, where he hired a “trophy secretary” who was “widely considered to be unqualified.”

The Post columnist has also made regular appearances on CNN, where she often sparred with the liberal network’s token Republican, Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year Scott Jennings. During one memorable exchange, Rampell claimed she wasn’t a Democrat but rather a “journalist,” which elicited a devastating smirk from Jennings. She also insisted that illegal border crossings “went down” under President Joe Biden, an absurdly false claim that prompted liberal host Abby Phillip to point out that illegal immigration surged to record highs on Biden’s watch.

The post WATCH: WaPo Columnist Who Praised Alleged Abuser Doug Emhoff as ‘Modern Day Sex Symbol,’ Lands Hosting Gig on MSNBC (Where She Belongs) appeared first on .

The Environmental Protection Agency canceled two $20 million environmental justice grants that the Biden administration awarded to its own advisers, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

On Monday, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency’s latest round of grant cancellations and cost-cutting measures. Included among the more than 400 canceled grants are 2 that the Biden administration awarded in December to Tennessee-based nonprofit Young, Gifted & Green and North Carolina-based nonprofit Democracy Green, a source familiar told the Free Beacon. Both groups had connections to the Biden White House and EPA—and neither had handled such a substantial amount of money before securing the taxpayer funds.

Young, Gifted & Green received its $20 million environmental justice grant after its CEO—LaTricea Adams—personally applied for the funding while simultaneously serving as a member of a top White House environmental justice council, the Free Beacon reported last month. The group has reported just $2.7 million in revenue—about 14 percent the size of the grant—since it registered as a nonprofit in 2020, tax filings show.

Democracy Green, meanwhile, received the $20 million to restore wetlands and remove lead pipes in hundreds of homes in North Carolina. The group is a small mother-daughter operation that has never conducted wetlands restoration or lead pipe removals, the Free Beacon reported last week. Last January, former EPA administrator Michael Regan appointed the president of its board, La’Meshia Whittington, to his Local Government Advisory Committee. Months later, Whittington spoke alongside Regan at a policy forum.

The actions underscore the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle Biden-era spending. Zeldin has taken particular aim at green energy and environmental justice programs that the previous administration rushed to implement during its final weeks and months in office.

“Working hand-in-hand with DOGE to rein in wasteful federal spending, EPA has saved more than $2 billion in taxpayer money,” Zeldin said in a statement on Monday. “It is our commitment at EPA to be exceptional stewards of tax dollars.”

Both the grant awarded to Young, Gifted & Green and the grant given to Democracy Green were part of the $2 billion Climate Justice Community Change Program, which was established by Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and championed by former president Joe Biden and former EPA administrator Michael Regan.

The groups were among the 105 entities selected to receive funding under the program. The EPA received 2,801 applications requesting tens of billions of dollars in funding for the program.

According to the source familiar, Zeldin’s actions to cut Biden-era spending affect several other Climate Justice Community Change Program grants and grants awarded under eight other programs. Those programs include the EPA’s Environmental Justice Small Grants Program and Collaborative Problem-Solving Cooperative Agreement Program.

In addition, Zeldin’s team located $20 billion the Biden administration awarded to eight nonprofits under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program parked at an outside financial institution. The Department of Justice froze that funding while they and the FBI investigate the Biden administration’s implementation of that program.

“It is my pledge to be accountable for every penny the EPA spends. This marks a stark turn from the waste and self-dealing of the Biden-Harris Administration intentionally tossing ‘gold bars off the Titanic.’ The American people deserve accountability and responsible stewardship of their tax dollars. We will continue to deliver,” Zeldin said last week.

The post Trump EPA Cancels ‘Environmental Justice’ Grants the Biden Admin Awarded to Its Own Advisers appeared first on .

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.) suggested Tuesday that Americans elected President Donald Trump because the country is in its “angry teenage years” and voters’ brains have not fully formed.

“I don’t think there’s anyone who feels like what’s going on right now is normal, even if you voted for Trump,” Slotkin said on The View. “We’re about to turn 250 years old, right? We’re still pretty young for a country.”

“These are like our angry teenage years. We are going through this push and pull where we’re happy, we’re sad, we want this, we want that,” Slotkin continued. “And what do you do when you have a teenager threatening themselves and others? You just try to get them through this period alive so that their brain can fully form.”

The View’s Joy Behar asked if Slotkin was referring to Trump.

“No, I’m talking about our country,” Slotkin replied. “We’re a pendulum swinging.”

Slotkin’s comments came in response to cohost Sunny Hostin asking the senator to address concerns that Democrats are “playing it safe” and “not meeting the moment” to combat Trump and his agenda. A Quinnipiac poll in January showed that only 31 percent of registered voters had a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, which has faced criticism for being too passive against Trump.

“I think that we are absolutely in extraordinary times, and it requires an extraordinary response,” Slotkin said.

Slotkin, a first-year senator, was elected in a swing state where Trump won by 1.4 percentage points. She also delivered the Democratic Party’s rebuttal to Trump’s joint address to Congress last week.

“America wants change. But there is a responsible way to make change—and a reckless way—and we can make that change without forgetting who we are as a country and as a democracy,” Slotkin said Wednesday.

The post WATCH: Elissa Slotkin Suggests Americans Elected Trump Because Their Brains Haven’t Fully Formed appeared first on .

Eugene Daniels, the “Kamala Harris expert” and “Beyoncé encyclopedia” who recently quit his job at Politico to join MSNBC as a weekend cohost and on-air personality, is under fire from fellow journalists who are increasingly aggrieved by his floundering leadership as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), a role he intends to keep despite his new role at the virulently partisan network.

Former CNN reporter Oliver Darcy reports that Daniels got an earful from WHCA members during a virtual meeting on Monday. The left-leaning organization is still reeling from President Donald Trump’s decision to revoke its power to determine which media outlets can participate in the White House press pool. The Trump administration argued that ending the group’s “monopoly” on access to White House events would allow less established media outlets to obtain “a seat at this highly coveted table.” The move came several days after Trump partially banned the Associated Press from White House events in response to the outlet’s refusal to acknowledge his renaming of the former Gulf of Mexico, now the Gulf of America.

Daniels, who is “well-liked in Washington” for his bold fashion sense, regular attendance at cocktail parties, and close relationships with powerful Democrats, faced “a lot of pointed questions” from members who were “frustrated” by his failure to respond more aggressively to what they view as a dangerous assault on their professional nobility. Daniels has released a handful of strongly worded statements complaining that Trump’s actions threatened “the independence of a free press in the United States,” but thus far, the WHCA has failed to mount a unified response that might increase the group’s leverage.

The first question Daniels received during the meeting from Christian Datoc of the Washington Examiner was about whether he intended to serve out his full term as WHCA president in light of his move from Politico correspondent to MSNBC personality. Daniels said he would continue covering the White House for MSNBC and vowed to retain his role as president. Other members accused Daniels of surrendering to Trump without a fight. “It does seem like y’all were caught with your pants down,” said Andrew Feinberg, a White House reporter for the Independent. April Ryan, White House correspondent for something called Black Press USA, blasted Daniels for giving a “blowoff” response to her questions about the WHCA’s tepid response.

“Tensions escalated,” according to Darcy, prompting the group’s executive director, former McClatchy reporter Steve Thomma, to defend Daniels by explaining that the WHCA board was doing a lot of hard work behind the scenes. But he also acknowledged there really isn’t much they can do absent some sort of performative boycott that some members would be reluctant to endorse. Thus far, for example, media outlets have continued to take part in White House pool coverage under the new regime. Daniels’s critics weren’t swayed by this argument, insisting feckless leadership was to blame for the group’s lack of unity.

Daniels, who has covered Kamala Harris since 2021, sent Darcy a statement on Monday that channeled the former vice president’s remarkable ability to generate evasive nonsense masquerading as a coherent strategy. He insisted the WHCA was “calibrating our approach” by “hearing from the people we serve.” He remained laser-focused on doing what needs to be done when it comes to “navigating how best to respond … as we chart our strategy going forward” and vowed to “continue these conversations” at next week’s board meeting.

Daniels published his final “scoop” at Politico last week about how Harris was seriously considering taking the steps she needs to take in terms of thinking about running for governor of California in 2026. His duties at MSNBC include cohosting a new weekend show with Jackie Alemany, a banking scion married to a former Biden climate adviser, and Jonathan Capehart, the longtime partisan activist who has urged Democrats to more forcefully acknowledge that “racism and misogyny played a role” in Harris’s defeat in 2024. Daniels has commended himself for his “tough” coverage of the Harris campaign, including the time he asked the failed candidate if she thought Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance were guilty of “irredeemable racism.”

The post Journalists in Disarray: WHCA President Eugene Daniels Refuses to Step Down Amid Accusations of Incompetence appeared first on .