Fellow Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) worked closely with Sen. Maj. Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to create the $1.6 trillion IRA back in July 2022. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office did not believe that the IRA was going to have an impact on inflation when it was passed, but the bill did include investments in green energy. Last year, Manchin criticized the implementation of his bill.
The 725-page IRA included a section for $3 billion in various types of “Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grants” to be available until Sept. 30, 2026, for “community-based nonprofit organizations.”
“Democrats wrote the legislation to funnel billions to ‘community-based nonprofit organizations’ with no accountability for how they spent taxpayer dollars. I feared that would be code for bankrolling extreme progressive environmental causes and propping up radical energy activists,” Capito wrote in the introduction to her case study.
Back in May, Capito announced that her staffers had found a $50 million grant through the IRA went to a group called the Climate Justice Alliance, which Capito said “engages in pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic activities.” Now, a case study has been released about a similar situation, this time involving a group called the NDN Collective, which was found to be one of the Climate Justice Alliance’s partners.
The group, according to the oversight committee’s findings, has stated beliefs that the U.S. government is illegitimate since before the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.
