In a jaw-dropping display of fiscal recklessness, the Biden administration, in its waning days before the January 20, 2025, Inauguration, flung $20 billion in taxpayer funds out the door—$1.9 billion of which landed in the lap of Power Forward Communities, a nonprofit tied to Stacey Abrams. This bombshell, detailed in a March 7, 2025, Legal Insurrection report, exposes not just a flagrant disregard for public money but a scandalous scheme where an untested NGO—barely off the ground with a laughable $100 in revenue—scooped up a fortune under the guise of “appliance upgrades.” As the Trump administration’s EPA and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) peel back the layers, what emerges is a tale of cronyism, opacity, and an illegitimate cash pipeline that mocks accountability.
Legal Insurrection: Stacey Abrams’ Linked Nonprofit Spent $1.9 Billion in Taxpayer Funds on Supposed Appliance Upgrades.
“These NGOs were created for the first time, many of them, just to get this money. And they’re pass-throughs.”
In December, Brent Efron, a Biden appointee at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), told an undercover reporter from Project Veritas that “it truly feels like we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge.” He admitted that EPA management was rushing to move billions of taxpayer dollars out the door before Inauguration Day, “before they [Trump appointees] come in and stop it all.” Efron saw these efforts as “an insurance policy against Trump winning.”
Asked where the “gold bars” were going, Efron replied, “Nonprofits, states, tribes, cities.”
The timeline alone reeks of desperation. In April 2024, the EPA, under Biden’s watch, doled out this $2 billion chunk from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund—part of the Inflation Reduction Act’s $27 billion green energy slush fund—to Power Forward Communities, a coalition formed just six months earlier in October 2023. By August 2024, the group crowed about decarbonizing homes with heat pumps and solar panels, yet by March 2025, Legal Insurrection reveals $1.9 billion—95% of the grant—vanished into “salaries and administrative costs,” with a measly $100 million left for actual appliances. That’s right: taxpayers shelled out nearly two billion dollars, and all they got was a bloated payroll and a promise. The kicker? This cash was parked at Citibank pre-Inauguration, a last-minute dodge to tie the incoming Trump team’s hands, as EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told the Free Beacon in February 2025—limiting oversight to a whisper.
Power Forward Communities’ credentials are a farce. Founded by five nonprofits—including Rewiring America, where Abrams served as senior counsel until late 2024—this outfit reported $100 in revenue in its first three months, per tax filings cited by the Washington Free Beacon. No track record, no scale, just a shiny website and Abrams’ name—a political heavyweight who cheered Biden’s green agenda and campaigned for Kamala Harris. X posts erupted, with users like @balls_eagle alleging $99 million “unaccounted for” and $1 million in appliances “stolen from Atlanta warehouses”—claims unverified but stoking the fire of public outrage. Speaker Mike Johnson, in a February 25 Blaze report, called it “a glaring example of enormous misuse,” spotlighting DOGE’s discovery of this absurdity. Meanwhile, the group’s own August 2024 press release promised “affordable decarbonization” for low-income homes—yet by March 2025, only $539 million was committed to projects, per Politico, leaving a $1.4 billion black hole.
Yahoo News parroting Snopes: Fact Check: Unpacking claim that group linked to Stacey Abrams got $2B federal grant.
What’s Undetermined:
Claims online say the $2 billion grant for Power Forward Communities was discovered by DOGE. However, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said on Feb. 13 that his team discovered the funding. Additionally, information about the grant was publicly available on a U.S. government website that tracks federal spending, and Power Forward Communities announced it in 2024.
According to usaspending.gov, a database of federal contracts and grants, a program named Power Forward Communities did receive a $2 billion federal grant in April 2024. The grant came from the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Clean Investment Fund and was paid out to Power Forward Communities in full at the time of this writing. However, while Abrams is connected to that group, it is through an advisory role for one of its five founding organizations, a nonprofit called Rewiring America. We have asked Power Forward Communities and Abrams’ office to confirm her involvement with the program and will update this story if they reply.
Yahoo’s “Mixture” Rating Doesn’t Clean the Stain of a $1.9 Billion Taxpayer Fiasco
Yahoo’s March 8, 2025, fact-check slapped a tepid “Mixture” rating on claims about Power Forward Communities—a Stacey Abrams-linked nonprofit that guzzled $1.9 billion in taxpayer funds for “appliance upgrades”—and sure, they’ve got a point: Not every wild accusation holds water. Trump’s jab that Abrams “headed” the group? Off by a hair—she was senior counsel at Rewiring America, one of its five partners, not the top dog. And that X-fueled rumor of $99 million vanishing into thin air? Unsubstantiated noise. But let’s not kid ourselves—Yahoo’s nitpicking doesn’t scrub away the stench of this egregious cash bonfire. This was a horrible waste of money, plain and simple, and no amount of “mixture” hedging can whitewash that.
The illegitimacy of this NGO’s windfall screams louder when you zoom out. The EPA’s $20 billion was split among just eight groups, a rushed job Zeldin dubbed a “gold bar scheme” in a February 22 New York Post interview—echoing a Project Veritas sting where an EPA staffer admitted it was an “insurance policy” against Trump. Power Forward’s partners, like Abrams’ Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count, tie it to a web of left-wing activism, not energy expertise. A 2023 EPA application process, touted as “competitive” by Politico, saw only five bids for three slots—hardly a gauntlet for a $2 billion prize. And Abrams? She didn’t “head” it, as Trump claimed in a March 4 speech (Politifact rated that False), but her advisory role and public hype (“Thrilled to be part,” she tweeted in 2023) lent it clout it didn’t earn.
This isn’t just waste—it’s a middle finger to taxpayers. While Biden’s team scrambled to lock in their legacy, they handed an unproven NGO a blank check, siphoning billions into salaries while California wildfires and Carolina floods begged for real aid. The stench of favoritism hangs heavy—Abrams’ 2018 campaign got illegal boosts from her New Georgia Project (fined $300,000 in January 2025, per NBC)—and now this. As Zeldin and DOGE claw for answers, the public’s left with a gut punch: $1.9 billion tossed out the door, no appliances in sight, and a nonprofit laughing all the way to the bank. This isn’t governance; it’s a grift, and the reckoning’s overdue.