President Donald Trump’s executive orders left a number of agencies struggling to understand how the attempt to pause the distribution of funds from former President Joe Biden’s 2021 infrastructure law and 2022 climate law will work.
“Executive orders do not change underlying statutes, so if loans or grants have been awarded pursuant to a statute like IRA and funds have been appropriated, an executive order would have a hard time turning that back,” Scott Segal told The Wall Street Journal, referring to the climate statute. Long delays “might have violated the law,” he said.
Billions of dollars have been disbursed to clean-energy projects through the Inflation Reduction Act and infrastructure funds, but billions more remain unspent.
