On March 19, 2025, a coalition of four attorneys general co-led by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the Trump administration and co-defendant Citibank to preserve federal grant dollars flowing into their states for clean-energy projects. The attorneys general filed the suit on behalf of state-created public “green banks” whose purpose is to stimulate the development of clean energy and greenhouse gas emissions-reduction projects and help overcome existing market barriers to these projects.

Among the thousands of projects that were affected by this funding freeze are the “Solar for All” program that supports the deployment of rooftop and community solar to as many as 900,000 low-income households and funds that would have saved the average homeowner $700 in heating costs by providing low-interest loans for people to purchase energy efficient systems for their homes. The awards were part of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a federal source of funds that Congress created as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, and the funds were held at Citibank for disbursement to grantees at their request.

However, since February 2025, the attorneys general allege that the EPA has “has pursued a highly irregular and illegal campaign” to thwart the flow of $20 billion in congressionally appropriate funds solely because Donald Trump disagrees with the law. This “violates fundamental constitutional guarantees of liberty in the separation of powers and flouts myriad statutory and regulatory controls on federal agencies’ management of Congressional appropriations and finalized awards.” The attorneys general won a preliminary injunction on April 15, 2025, unfreezing the funding, and the federal government is appealing.

I’m leading this coalition of attorneys general in opposing yet one more illegal power grab by the Trump administration because it is our job to stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law when others try to run roughshod over it. In 2022, Congress duly passed and the president duly signed the Inflation Reduction Act that makes dollars available for clean-energy and greenhouse gas-reduction projects in Minnesota and across the country. If the current president wants to ask Congress to repeal the act and the funding that goes along with it, he is free to do so, but no president or federal agency can single-handedly undo an act of Congress, much less in the improper and disgraceful way this president and EPA have tried to go about it. We are also holding Citibank accountable for improperly complying with the government’s campaign of intimidation and freezing funds that it is required by law to release. Attorney General Keith Ellison