Nearly two dozen Republican state attorneys general sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin Tuesday, calling on him to cancel funding to a left-wing environmental group accused of training and lobbying judges on climate policy, Fox News Digital exclusively learned.
‘As attorney general, I refuse to stand by while Americans’ tax dollars fund radical environmental training for judges across the country,’ Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen told Fox News Digital of his push to encourage the EPA to end its funding of the Climate Judiciary Project.
‘The Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project is using woke climate propaganda, under the guise of what they call ‘neutral’ education, to persuade judges and push their wildly unpopular agenda through the court system,’ he said. ‘I commend President Trump’s efforts to cut waste and abuse during the first eight months of his presidency, and I am optimistic that his Administration will do the right thing and halt all funding to ELI.’
Knudsen spearheaded the letter sent to Zeldin Tuesday, which included the signatures of 22 other Republican state attorneys general, calling for the EPA to axe its funding to the left-wing environmental nonprofit, called the Environmental Law Institute, which oversees the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP).
The Environmental Law Institute founded the Climate Judiciary Project in 2018, which pitches itself as a ‘first-of-its-kind effort’ that ‘provides judges with authoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the ways climate science is arising in the law.’
The group, however, has been accused of trying to manipulate judges to make them more amenable to left-wing climate litigation.
The letter sent Tuesday called on the EPA specifically to end any grants and awards endowed to the group.
‘We write to bring to your attention grants made by EPA to the Environmental Law Institute (‘ELI’),’ the letter reads. ‘According to its 2024 financial statements, ELI received approximately 13% of its revenue in 2023, and 8.4% in 2024, from EPA awards. ELI also apparently still expected to receive funds from the federal government; its financial statement warned that the collectability of federal grant funds ‘is subject to significant uncertainty related to collectability and continual funding due to (the federal grant) funding freeze or other federal actions.”
The Environmental Law Institute received $637,591 from the EPA in 2024 and $866,402 in 2023 from the EPA, according to nonprofit tax documents published by ProPublica detailing the group’s federal expenditures that year.
‘The Climate Judiciary Project’s mission is clear: lobby judges in order to make climate change policy through the courts,’ 23 state attorneys general wrote in the letter. ‘An alumni magazine profile said the quiet part out loud, writing that the Climate Judiciary Project co-founder was ‘explaining the science of climate change to a group of people with real power to act on it: judges.’ The Climate Judiciary Project’s tampering raises serious legal and ethical questions.’
The Environmental Law Institute, however, in a recent comment to Fox News Digital, has maintained that its educational programs through Climate Judiciary Project are in accordance with the standards established by national judicial education institutions.
Climate Judiciary Project educational events are done ‘in partnership with leading national judicial education institutions and state judicial authorities, in accordance with their accepted standards,’ a spokesperson for the group said in an emailed statement in July. ‘Its curriculum is fact-based and science-first, grounded in consensus reports and developed with a robust peer review process that meets the highest scholarly standards.’
‘CJP’s work is no different than the work of other continuing judicial education organizations that address important complex topics, including medicine, tech and neuroscience,’ an Environmental Law Institute spokesperson previously told Fox News Digital when asked about its educational programs.
The call for EPA to slash any funds to the Environmental Law Institute was celebrated by leading groups such as the American Energy Institute and the Alliance for Consumers, who lamented in a comment to Fox Digital that taxpayer funds should not be used to fund the group and that ‘courtroom maneuvering’ threatens day-to-day life.
‘The State Attorneys General are right to call for the elimination of taxpayer funding for the Environmental Law Institute and its Climate Judiciary Project,’ Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told Fox Digital. ‘This is a coordinated campaign to advance the Green New Deal through the judiciary using so-called climate litigation in the courts. Its curriculum is developed by climate alarmist allies of the plaintiffs and delivered to judges behind closed doors. Public funds should never be used to finance political advocacy disguised as judicial education.’
O.H. Skinner, the executive director of Alliance for Consumers, which is a nonprofit focused on advocating on behalf of American consumers, remarked that ‘as we have long warned, the left has a plan to reshape American society by using lawsuits in courts all across the country, especially in places like Hawaii and other coastal enclaves.’
‘The new wave of revelations about ELI is further concerning evidence of how committed the left is to imposing mandatory Progressive Lifestyle Choices through this courtroom maneuvering and how big a threat it really is to all our ways of life,’ Skinner added.
The Tuesday letter specifically argued: ‘State consumer protection laws prohibit deceptive and misleading statements to market a product. ELI is representing its training as objective when reality shows that it is not. State Attorneys General are responsible for protecting consumers, and we are concerned by ELI’s statements.’
The EPA has taken a hatchet to millions of dollars doled out under the Biden administration to left-wing groups and other programs deemed a waste of taxpayer funds upon Zeldin’s Senate confirmation as EPA chief in January.
The EPA under the Trump administration has canceled $20 billion in grants under the Inflation Reduction Act — which has led to an ongoing court battle. Zeldin said in March that the $20 billion in U.S. tax dollars were ‘parked at an outside financial institution in a deliberate effort to limit government oversight, doling out your money through just eight pass-through, politically connected, unqualified, and in some cases brand-new NGOs.’
The state attorneys general reflected on the previous cuts in their call to Zeldin to do the same to ELI funding.
‘Under President Trump’s bold leadership, federal agencies and the Department of Government Efficiency have saved an estimated $190 billion, including terminating more than 15,000 grants that saved approximately $44 billion,’ the letter states. ‘You have heeded President Trump’s directive and achieved monumental savings for taxpayers. You canceled $20 billion in climate grants under the Inflation Reduction Act. You canceled another $1.7 billion in diversity, equity, and inclusion grants.3 And you canceled 800 environmental justice grants.’
Climate Judiciary Project and the Environmental Law Institute previously have come under fire from lawmakers such as Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who accused the groups of working to ‘train judges’ and ‘make them agreeable to creative climate litigation tactics.’
The Texas Republican recently has argued there is a ‘systematic campaign’ launched by the Chinese Communist Party and American left-wing activists to weaponize the court systems to ‘undermine American energy dominance.’
Climate Judiciary Project is a pivotal player in the ‘lawfare’ as it works to secure ‘judicial capture,’ according to Cruz, Fox Digital has previously reported.