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First on Fox: Practically two dozen Republican state attorneys common despatched a letter to Environmental Safety Company chief Lee Zeldin Tuesday, calling on him to cancel funding to a left-wing environmental group accused of coaching and lobbying judges on local weather coverage, Fox Information Digital solely discovered.
“As legal professional common, I refuse to face by whereas People’ tax {dollars} fund radical environmental coaching for judges throughout the nation,” Montana Lawyer Normal Austin Knudsen instructed Fox Information Digital of his push to encourage the EPA to finish its funding of the Local weather Judiciary Mission.
“The Environmental Legislation Institute’s Local weather Judiciary Mission is utilizing woke local weather propaganda, below the guise of what they name ‘impartial’ training, to influence judges and push their wildly unpopular agenda by way of the courtroom system,” he mentioned. “I commend President Trump’s efforts to chop waste and abuse through the first eight months of his presidency, and I’m optimistic that his Administration will do the best factor and halt all funding to ELI.”
Knudsen spearheaded the letter despatched to Zeldin Tuesday, which included the signatures of twenty-two different Republican state attorneys common, calling for the EPA to axe its funding to the left-wing environmental nonprofit, known as the Environmental Legislation Institute, which oversees the Local weather Judiciary Mission (CJP).
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Montana Lawyer Normal Knudsen spearheaded a letter despatched to EPA chief Lee Zeldin Aug. 26, 2025, calling for the EPA to finish its funding to the Environmental Legislation Institute. (Getty Pictures)
The Environmental Legislation Institute based the Local weather Judiciary Mission in 2018, which pitches itself as a “first-of-its-kind effort” that “supplies judges with authoritative, goal, and trusted training on local weather science, the impacts of local weather change, and the methods local weather science is arising within the regulation.”
The group, nonetheless, has been accused of attempting to govern judges to make them extra amenable to left-wing local weather litigation.
The letter despatched Tuesday known as on the EPA particularly to finish any grants and awards endowed to the group.
“We write to deliver to your consideration grants made by EPA to the Environmental Legislation Institute (‘ELI’),” the letter reads. “In accordance with its 2024 monetary statements, ELI acquired roughly 13% of its income in 2023, and eight.4% in 2024, from EPA awards. ELI additionally apparently nonetheless anticipated to obtain funds from the federal authorities; its monetary assertion warned that the collectability of federal grant funds ‘is topic to important uncertainty associated to collectability and continuous funding because of (the federal grant) funding freeze or different federal actions.'”
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The Environmental Legislation Institute acquired $637,591 from the EPA in 2024 and $866,402 in 2023 from the EPA, in keeping with nonprofit tax paperwork revealed by ProPublica detailing the group’s federal expenditures that yr.
“The Local weather Judiciary Mission’s mission is evident: foyer judges to be able to make local weather change coverage by way of the courts,” 23 state attorneys common wrote within the letter. “An alumni journal profile mentioned the quiet half out loud, writing that the Local weather Judiciary Mission co-founder was ‘explaining the science of local weather change to a bunch of individuals with actual energy to behave on it: judges.’ The Local weather Judiciary Mission’s tampering raises severe authorized and moral questions.”
EPA administrator Lee Zeldin’s workplace was despatched a letter Aug. 26, 2025, by 23 state attorneys common calling on the EPA to finish funding to the Environmental Legislation Institute and its Local weather Judiciary Mission. (Al Drago)
The Environmental Legislation Institute, nonetheless, in current remark to Fox Information Digital, has maintained that its academic applications by way of Local weather Judiciary Mission are in accordance with the requirements established by nationwide judicial training establishments.
Local weather Judiciary Mission academic occasions are executed “in partnership with main nationwide judicial training establishments and state judicial authorities, in accordance with their accepted requirements,” a spokesperson for the group mentioned in an emailed assertion in July. “Its curriculum is fact-based and science-first, grounded in consensus stories and developed with a sturdy peer overview course of that meets the very best scholarly requirements.”
“CJP’s work is not any totally different than the work of different persevering with judicial training organizations that handle essential advanced subjects, together with medication, tech and neuroscience,” an Environmental Legislation Institute spokesperson beforehand instructed Fox Information Digital when requested about its academic applications.
The decision for EPA to slash any funds to the Environmental Legislation Institute was celebrated by main teams such because the American Vitality Institute and the Alliance for Customers, who lamented in remark to Fox Digital that taxpayer funds shouldn’t be used to fund the group and that “courtroom maneuvering” threatens day-to-day life.
“The State Attorneys Normal are proper to name for the elimination of taxpayer funding for the Environmental Legislation Institute and its Local weather Judiciary Mission,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Vitality Institute, instructed Fox Digital. “This can be a coordinated marketing campaign to advance the Inexperienced New Deal by way of the judiciary utilizing so-called local weather litigation within the courts. Its curriculum is developed by local weather alarmist allies of the plaintiffs and delivered to judges behind closed doorways. Public funds ought to by no means be used to finance political advocacy disguised as judicial training.”
O.H. Skinner, the manager director of Alliance for Customers, which is a nonprofit centered on advocating on behalf of American shoppers, remarked that “as we now have lengthy warned, the left has a plan to reshape American society through the use of lawsuits in courts all throughout the nation, particularly in locations like Hawaii and different coastal enclaves.”
“The brand new wave of revelations about ELI is additional regarding proof of how dedicated the left is to imposing necessary Progressive Life-style Selections by way of this courtroom maneuvering and the way huge a risk it truly is to all our methods of life,” Skinner added.
A local weather protester scales the Wilson Constructing as a part of an Earth Day rally in opposition to fossil fuels April 22, 2022. (Getty Pictures)
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The Tuesday letter particularly argued: “State client safety legal guidelines prohibit misleading and deceptive statements to market a product. ELI is representing its coaching as goal when actuality exhibits that it’s not. State Attorneys Normal are chargeable for defending shoppers, and we’re involved by ELI’s statements.”
The EPA has taken a hatchet to tens of millions of {dollars} doled out below the Biden administration to left-wing teams and different applications deemed a waste of taxpayer funds upon Zeldin’s Senate affirmation as EPA chief in January.
The EPA below the Trump administration has canceled $20 billion in grants below the Inflation Discount Act — which has led to an ongoing courtroom battle. Zeldin mentioned in March that the $20 billion in U.S. tax {dollars} have been “parked at an out of doors monetary establishment in a deliberate effort to restrict authorities oversight, doling out your cash by way of simply eight pass-through, politically related, unqualified, and in some instances brand-new NGOs.”
The state attorneys common mirrored on the earlier cuts of their name to Zeldin to do the identical to ELI funding.
“Below President Trump’s daring management, federal businesses and the Division of Authorities Effectivity have saved an estimated $190 billion, together with terminating greater than 15,000 grants that saved roughly $44 billion,” the letter states. “You’ve gotten heeded President Trump’s directive and achieved monumental financial savings for taxpayers. You canceled $20 billion in local weather grants below the Inflation Discount Act. You cancelled one other $1.7 billion in range, fairness, and inclusion grants.3 And also you canceled 800 environmental justice grants.”
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Local weather Judiciary Mission and the Environmental Legislation Institute beforehand have come below fireplace from lawmakers equivalent to Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who accused the teams of working to “practice judges” and “make them agreeable to artistic local weather litigation ways.”
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The Texas Republican lately has argued there’s a “systematic marketing campaign” launched by the Chinese language Communist Occasion and American left-wing activists to weaponize the courtroom programs to “undermine American power dominance.”
Local weather Judiciary Mission is a pivotal participant within the “lawfare” as it really works to safe “judicial seize,” in keeping with Cruz, Fox Digital has beforehand reported.
