Steve Cortes, president of the League of American Workers (LAW), said a Durham-based credit union and its associated “climate” group should give up legal challenges to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) termination of billions in Biden-era “climate” grants.
“For the good of the country, Self-Help [Credit Union], Climate United, and all the parties behind these green scam boondoggles should drop these endless legal challenges now,” Cortes said. “The courts have confirmed what many of us knew all along: Congress did not authorize perpetual entitlement to taxpayer funds for politically preferred climate projects.”
“Let’s move on, restore accountability, and stop letting special interests hijack the public purse,” said Cortes.
Self-Help Credit Union and its affiliate Self-Help Ventures Fund have drawn scrutiny for their role in nearly $7 billion in climate change funding awarded under the Biden administration’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF).
The NCIF is part of the Inflation Reduction Act’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. Republican lawmakers have raised concerns about possible favoritism and ethical conflicts involving the NCIF and related programs.
Critics like Cortes allege that Self-Help and its affiliates engage in insider dealing, benefitting from the grant process though close ties with Biden administration officials.
In February 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency froze access to roughly $20 billion in climate and clean-energy grants, citing concerns about fraud, abuse, and conflicts of interest. The agency moved the following month to formally terminate the awards, including nearly $7 billion allocated to the Climate United coalition.
That decision was temporarily blocked in April when a federal district judge issued an injunction, allowing the grantees to continue holding the funds while the case moved forward.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin criticized the decision to allocate $20 billion to an outside financial institution, including the nearly $7 billion awarded to the Climate United Fund, a coalition that includes the Self-Help Ventures Fund.
“Shockingly, roughly 20 billion of your tax dollars were parked at an outside financial institution by the Biden EPA,” Zeldin said in a February press release. “This scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history, and it was purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.”
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Sept. 2 that the EPA may proceed with terminating more than $16 billion in climate and clean-energy grants, including the $7 billion to “Climate United.” The panel vacated a lower-court injunction that had blocked the cancellations, finding that disputes over the grants are “essentially contractual” and belong in the Court of Federal Claims.
In an official statement, the EPA said the decision vindicated its move to claw back funds marred by “self-dealing and conflicts of interest, unqualified recipients, and intentionally reduced agency oversight.”
Climate United and allied groups have filed a petition for rehearing en banc, arguing the panel’s decision conflicted with precedent and ignored the harm to communities that expected support for local clean-energy financing. Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan had issued a preliminary injunction ordering EPA to restore access to some funds, but that ruling was overturned.
Cortes previously called for lawmakers to investigate Self-Help Credit Union over its role in administering climate funds, arguing that taxpayer money was being funneled to politically connected organizations without proper accountability.
Self-Help Ventures Fund is a U.S. Treasury-certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI). Along with Self-Help Credit Union, it has received significant federal funding, including $502 million from the Treasury’s CDFI Fund. The funding has raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest involving former Self-Help employees now overseeing federal programs.
The Self-Help organizations have long-standing ties to Democratic political networks.
Martin Eakes, founder of Self-Help Credit Union, Self-Help Ventures Fund and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), is connected to multiple LLCs and Democrat political donors, including support from philanthropist George Soros.
Eakes has also served on an FDIC advisory committee linked to controversial policies known as “Operation Choke Point 2.0,” a targeted attempt to remove conservatives as customers from financial institutions.
