The program sought to hire ‘garden educators’ with a ‘commitment to social justice and anti-racism’
The White House this week formally terminated the American Climate Corps, former president Joe Biden’s signature multimillion-dollar work program created to bolster his aggressive climate and green energy agenda, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
On Wednesday, the eight federal entities tasked with managing the American Climate Corps—including the White House, AmeriCorps, and the Department of the Interior—signed off on terminating the program and dissolved the original memorandum of understanding that established it, a senior White House official told the Free Beacon. The White House also took the program’s official website, which was used to recruit workers, offline.
“Another win, on Wednesday, Biden’s ‘American Climate Corps’ was officially shuttered,” the official said. “President Trump promised to end the Green New Scam, and he is doing just that.”
The termination of the American Climate Corps is another salvo in Trump’s sweeping energy agenda—in its first weeks in office, the president’s administration has reopened millions of acres for oil drilling, reversed a policy shuttering natural gas exports, and gutted environmental justice programs across the government. The action also follows through on Trump’s promise to roll back Biden’s many Green New Deal-style initiatives.
Biden unveiled the American Climate Corps in September 2023, saying the program would deploy more than 20,000 Americans to work on climate resilience, green energy, and environmental justice projects nationwide. The program, which launched on Earth Day in April 2024, posted thousands of job listings for positions like field coordinator, hydrologic technician, and land conservation crew member located across 36 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. Like other Biden-era programs, the corps was infused with left-wing cultural ideas, which included positions like an anti-racist gardener position that paid $20 an hour.
The program was a direct outgrowth of the Green New Deal. Far-left lawmakers, climate activist organizations, and Green New Deal sponsors like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) had spent years calling for a $30 billion federal climate work program. Those same groups and lawmakers were among the most vocal supporters of Biden’s American Climate Corps.
The program was also explicitly designed to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion by hiring Americans with little experience. Upon its creation, the White House said the program would mobilize a “new, diverse generation” to fight global warming. In September 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency created an environmental justice branch of the corps.
Republicans, meanwhile, panned the American Climate Corps as wasteful, unnecessary, and a backdoor attempt to shut down domestic fossil fuel production. House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) launched an investigation into the program’s funding, noting that it was unclear where the White House would obtain the funds required to hire tens of thousands of workers.
The Biden administration ultimately reallocated millions of dollars from existing federal programs to initiate the program. Biden then requested $8 billion in his 2024 budget proposal to fund an additional 50,000 Climate Corps jobs annually through 2031, though Congress never approved that request.
“This was a woke, pro-Green New Deal entity charged with doing away with reliable sources of American energy which cost taxpayers’ money, made America more reliant on foreign adversaries for oil, and made America weaker on the world stage,” the senior White House official told the Free Beacon.
This article was originally published at freebeacon.com
