OPINION:
Republican state attorneys general are petitioning Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin to stop funding an Environmental Law Institute program that trains judges in the radical climate change way to go.
Less propaganda. More justice is blind — that’s always a good thing.
The fact that tax dollars have been used at all — never mind for years and years — to pay far leftist forces to teach judges how best to rule on matters involving the environment is shocking. The backstory is this: The Environmental Law Institute “runs the Climate Judiciary Project, which claims that it ‘is 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 letter from the attorneys general states.
And that is indeed the mission.
The letter goes on: “Because of how it has carried out these activities, the Climate Judiciary Project has been charged with ‘corruptly influencing the courts and destroying the rule of law to promote climate cult alarmism.’ This is because the Climate Judiciary Project ‘trainings attempt to influence the very judges who are hearing these cases, using a curriculum developed in part by individuals assisting with that litigation.’”
Talk about corrupt.
As summarized by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who’s leading the charge of 22 other attorney generals to get Zeldin to cut the funding, the project is simply “woke climate propaganda, under the guise of [providing] ‘neutral’ education,” and it’s being used to “persuade judges and push their wildly unpopular agenda through the court system,” Fox News reported.
Grant amounts from EPA to ELI have been significant. According to the attorneys general, ELI received 13 percent of its revenues, or $866,402, in 2023 and more than 8 percent of its revenues, or $637,591, in 2024 from the EPA — meaning, from taxpayers. The organization also apparently expected to receive more because “its financial statement warned that the collectability of federal grant funds ‘is subject to significant uncertainty related … to [the federal grant] funding freeze’” put in place by — you got it — this Donald Trump administration. And yay, Team Trump.
Yay, Team Trump, for reeling in the powers of the radicalized, regulatory-loving nut jobs who’ve used environmentalism as a means of control and redistributing wealth.
“EPA Launches Biggest Deregulatory Action in U.S. History,” the EPA wrote in March, detailing Zeldin’s 31-point plan to decrease the agency’s overreach.
But this ELI-Climate Judiciary Project is just a new level of leftist infiltration into government. It was created in 2018 and since, has hosted more than 50 events and trained more than 2,000 judges.
Two. Thousand.
But it gets even worse.
The president of ELI is a woman named Jordan Diamond. She previously served as the executive director of the University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, “where she helped launch initiatives including GrizzlyCorps and the California-China Climate Institute,” her bio page states.
California-China?
It’s headed by Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, and by Xie Zhenhua, China’s special representative for climate change affairs.
“Launched in September 2019, this groundbreaking initiative was established to spur further climate action through joint research, training and dialogue in California and China,” the California-China Climate Institute website reported. “This institute will inform national policy makers, foster dialogue and cooperation and promote the implementation of climate solutions at all levels.”
China and California in charge of America’s environmental matters?
Zeldin better hurry. He only has a few more years, at best.
The climate change propaganda goes deep. And that very well may be an understatement.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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