House Speaker Mike Johnson urged EPA late last year to award a city in his district a grant focused on the environment and disadvantaged communities — funding from the Democrats’ climate law that Republicans have vowed to gut.
The Louisiana Republican, who was just reelected speaker despite pushback from his conservative flank, sent the letter to EPA on Nov. 15, 2024. In that letter, he supported an application from the city of Minden and Louisiana Tech University.
“I understand the funds will be used to support their ‘Empowering Communities with Innovative Solutions to Reduce Pollution, Build Climate Resilience and Improve Public Health Project,’” he wrote, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News via a person who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge the information.
In his letter, Johnson continued that the project “is designed to focus on water quality and sustainability … specifically targeting underserved communities in north Louisiana.”
“The three-year initiative will test cutting-edge water treatment processes to monitor and reduce pollutants in drinking water and wastewater that will benefit the people of this community,” he wrote.
Johnson concludes by asking for a report of EPA’s final decision.
The exact amount of the grant request was not immediately available.
The letter — sent a week after the November election in which Republicans promised to undo Democrats’ major legislative victories — comes as the GOP and President-elect Donald Trump vow to repeal the climate law known as the Inflation Reduction Act.
It also comes as Johnson will have to contend with warring factions in his conference who are at odds over exactly how much of the IRA subsidies and grants to strike through the budget reconciliation process to pay for extending the 2017 tax cuts, which expire at the end of the year.
The IRA, worth hundreds of billions of dollars for clean energy incentives, contains $2 billion in environmental justice grants designed to curb pollution in neighborhoods throughout the country. So far, $1.6 billion in grants have been awarded — but not necessarily obligated — to 105 organizations.
According to EPA’s website, the Minden application has not yet been selected. The EPA press office said the agency received more than 1,700 applicants just before the November deadline and continues to review them; more announcements could be made in the spring.
‘The problems are real’
Environmentalists, who have prodded the Republican leadership on environmental and climate questions for years, were delighted to hear Johnson apparently sees the value in the climate law programs.
“The IRA was written because the problems are real,” said Earthjustice attorney Raul Garcia. “And I can only hope he sees the value in it now, and that he would be so kind to ensure that people outside of his district across the entire country benefit from the investments in the IRA — so as to not roll them back with congressional action.”
Upon winning reelection as speaker last week, Johnson declared on the House floor that Republicans would “pass legislation to eliminate funding for the Green New Deal,” which has become shorthand for environmental programs and grants of all kinds.
Asked how Johnson squares this apparent contradiction, an aide with his office said in an email, “Despite the liberal media working with a radicalized agency to spin their narrative, simply asking for fair consideration for the people members of Congress represent — in any method the federal government spends money — is in no way an expression of support for a horrible, disastrous bill that’s caused higher inflation and crushed the American people.”
Already, House Republicans are ramping up oversight of IRA programs, with new Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) promising to immediately probe the “Green New Deal slush fund,” an apparent reference to the IRA’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
“We’re going to see what money’s gone out the door, what money is still available, what we can bring back in the door,” he said Monday.
Trump has called the climate law a “con job,” and, as of this week, his team insisted that they intend to try to repeal as much of it as possible, according to one person granted anonymity to discuss private talks.
For his part, Johnson has previously wavered on his precise position of undoing the IRA, which has generated clean energy manufacturing in red states and congressional districts across the country. The speaker in September said he supports taking a “scalpel,” and not a “sledgehammer,” to the law “because there’s a few provisions in there that have helped overall.”
Exactly what he hopes to protect remains a mystery. A dozen or so House members have urged the speaker to keep some of the law’s tax incentives for no-carbon technologies. And some of the nation’s most powerful energy industry groups have been targeting specific lawmakers whose districts have seen a flood of federal dollars from a law not one Republican voted for.
This isn’t the first time Republicans have been forced to explain their support for federal funding when they opposed the bill. Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), who last Congress chaired the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment, Manufacturing and Critical Materials, has addressed similar inconsistencies for his support for a $7.6 billion vehicle and battery plant in his district. He said he supports the project but opposes government mandates.
Asked about Johnson’s letter to EPA, Carter was matter of fact: “Obviously we’re up here to represent our constituents,” he said. “We got to look at the whole package … but at the same time he’s up here to represent his people, and they need to hear his voice.”
But the question gave pause to Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who chairs the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee. “I would have a hard time advocating for a program to be funded in a program I was also advocating cutting.”
