When the marble size fell on Alabama in 2023, it devastated Camp Hill, a city with 1,000, in which almost half of the residents lived below the poverty border. Decks were demolished, cars were broken, the roofs were destroyed and only a few people insured.
The municipality expected to receive help this month in the form of a federal scholarship in the amount of $ 20 million to help homeowners carry out repairs-money that comes from a law on biodara to combat climate change.
But these funds have now been stopped by President Trump's order that all federal climate expenditure is during the break. Although the White House has lifted a comprehensive guideline this week that would have stopped trillion dollars in grants in the federal government, a separate order of the executive regulation, which accepts $ 10 billion in energy and environmental expenses.
This break paralyzes the paralysis of the federal authorities, leads to confusion in states and cities, delays construction projects and forces some companies to go to vacation workers.
“These are real people,” said Warren Tidwell, director of the Alabama Center for Lural Organizing and Systemic Solutions, who leads the efforts to repair Camp Hills to many damaged, leaky roofs. “We have a woman in the 80s who lives alone, and if she does not repair her roof, we will have a senior who is homeless at the end of the 1980s,” said Tidwell.
On the day he was sworn in, Mr. Trump issued an executive order for the “end of the Green New Deal”, his Catchallamt season for climate policy. The White House called for the federal authorities to pause and review all funds approved by the inflation Reduction Act and a non -partisan infrastructure law – two legislative templates that were signed by the former President Joseph R. Biden and hundreds of billions of dollars of wind and wind and Solar projects, Electric, invested, Electric projects, electric vehicles and other low -carbon energy technologies.
Agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department of Energy were received by complying with grants, loans and other editions.
The break has influenced a wide range of programs.
The states were blocked from the receipt of funds from a 7 billion dollar program to help municipalities with low incomes installing solar modules. School districts in Virginia, New York City and the rural Nevada are not sure whether the electrical school buses for which they had signed contracts arrive. The ports in South Carolina and Tampa, Florida, had each awarded almost 2 million US dollars for cleaning the pollution, which could now be frozen. Battery companies that have received federal grants to build factories do not know when they are paid.
Officials of the White House refused to comment on the recording.
Although the law on reducing the inflation has been adopted by Democrats, 80 percent of the law's investments have gone into Republican congress districts. So far, however, many Republicans have not freezing expenses. Democrats push the agencies on answers and call for legal justification for the lawsuit.
“It was chaotic and confusing,” said Maren Mahoney, director of the Office of Resilience of the Governor of Arizona. Last year, the state received a grant of $ 156 million via the EPA to use 61 megawatts of solar energy in the whole state, with the focus on low-income and tribal communities.
Ms. Mahoney said she had just offered her first four employees when Mr. Trump was opened and her group could not have access to her money through the government's automated system. The calls to the EPA did not go back, said Ms. Mahoney.
Jeff Landis, a spokesman for the EPA, said the agency implemented Mr. Trump's executive regulation.
This week in the state of Washington, a company called Zero Emissions Northwest, which helps the rural communities to secure grants to save energy costs, exposed three employees after the government hired the reimbursements.
David Funk, the company's president, said that the farmers and business owners with whom he had worked with had under construction for projects for the American program after the construction of projects. The participants often immerse themselves in their own savings or borrow money to do things like the isolation of their buildings, improve pizza ovens or install solar collectors to compensate for the irrigation costs. They then expect the federal government to honor their promise to repay them for part of the costs.
But on Tuesday, when Mr. Funk submitted invoices for his customers, the Ministry of Agriculture informed him that reimbursement had been held. His customers are currently being owed to at least 250,000 US dollars, he said.
“The farmers lose money every day,” said Mr. Funk in an interview. He added that the program “to drive the goals of the new administration – we are working on reducing the operating costs, we generate energy on site and buy American products.”
For a new administration, it is normal to briefly slow down the agency's actions as it sets its priorities. “What is different is the scope and depth of these executive commands,” said Emily Hammond, legal professor at George Washington University, who previously worked as a deputy General Counsel for the Environment and Legal Strike in energy ride.
For example, an internal EPA memo for keeping the payment of funds, for which the government has already signed a contract for providing the money. This means that the government could be sued if it violates its obligations.
On Friday, a federal judge of the Trump administration ordered the blocking of federal financing for all programs in congress to no longer block on 22 states. It remained unclear whether or when agencies could resume expenses.
As part of the Biden Administration, the Grants and Loan Energy Ministry awarded companies that upgrade transmission lines, built batteries, revived a closed nuclear power plant and much more. Some companies and contractors say that they have started to invest with the expectation that they would be refunded, but now do not know when that will be.
According to Mr. Trump's Executive Order, agencies have 90 days to check the pattern expenditure, and it can only progress after important political civil servants. The White House says that this will ensure that all expenses match its political priorities.
Critics say the result could be paralysis. “If that sounds insanely inefficient, it is because it is so,” said Ryan Fitzpatrick, Senior Director of domestic politics in a third way, a center-link think tank. “This process could take months. We speak of thousands of contracts and hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been delayed and possibly canceled. “
Some experts were concerned about the effects of longer uncertainty. Since the adoption of the inflation reduction law, companies have announced plans to invest more than $ 167 billion in US factories in order to build solar modules, batteries, electric vehicles and other cleaning technologies, according to the data of the Atlas public order, a research company, Atlas data. In addition to tax credits, some of these factories received federal loans or grants.
“We are in the middle of a very important investment cycle,” said Mike Carr, managing director of the solar energy manufacturer for America Coalition. “But there is a risk that this dynamic will lose if the uncertainty is introduced.”
Other federal climate shots go to the arms or rural areas.
Representative Jennifer McClellan, Democrat of Virginia, said that Henrico County's public school system was still waiting to hear if a grant of 1.3 million US dollars for electrical school buses that the EPA had approved during the bidges , would be honored.
And in central -illinois is a coalition of 13 rural school districts in which a scholarship for the Energy Ministry of 15 million US is, if at all.
“We are just well ghost,” said Tim Farquer, the superintendent of the Mercer County School District in Illinois, who heads the program.