FILE -- Solar pannels on the roofs of homes in the community of Heron's Nest in Shallotte, N.C., July 12, 2023. The Trump administration is preparing to terminate $7 billion in federal grants intended to help low- and moderate-income families install solar panels on their homes, according to two people briefed on the matter.(Bobby Altman/The New York Times)
North Carolina is joining a nationwide lawsuit against federal environmental officials, seeking to block President Donald Trump's order to cancel billions of dollars in solar grants for low-income families.
Attorney General Jeff Jackson and 21 other state attorneys general sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday. They say Trump's top environmental aide acted illegally when he canceled the grants in August.
The grants through a program called Solar For All were meant to go to low-income families, and people in rural areas, to help them put solar panels on their homes. The idea was fourfold, according to supporters:
"These funds were going to help low-income and rural North Carolinians save money on their energy bills," Jackson wrote in a statement. "Thousands of families were going to have the option to install solar power, save money, and have another energy option after a major storm."
Approximately 12,500 families in North Carolina qualified for a total of $156 million in grants under the program, which kicked off last year. But only about $6 million was delivered before Trump took office and, in August, ended the program entirely.
North Carolina now wants the rest of the money, roughly $150 million, to start flowing into the state once more.
"Rooftop solar drives down utility bills, reduces air pollution and creates jobs," Reid Wilson, who leads the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality under Democratic Gov. Josh Stein's administration, said in a statement Thursday supporting the lawsuit.
Trump's EPA Director Lee Zedlin announced the cancellation of the grants on social media this summer, calling the program a "boondoggle" whose cancellation would save taxpayer dollars.
"We are ending Solar for All for good, saving US taxpayers ANOTHER $7 BILLION!," Zedlin wrote.
Trump and Congressional Republicans have been seeking to slash government spending to help pay for trillions of dollars worth of tax cuts they approved this summer, in a plan Trump called his "One Big Beautiful Bill." They've also sought to cut funding for medical research, health care, public schools and other federal programs.
However, the tax cuts are still expected to add more than $3 trillion to the national deficit, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Trump has claimed his tariff policies will cover that deficit. But economists say it won't come close, even if the tariffs remain in place, PolitiFact reported earlier this year.
And some of the GOP's attempts to cut spending have already been undone in court, due to challenges like this new lawsuit against the solar grant cancellations.
Trump this summer walked back plans to cancel tens of millions of dollars in public school funding for North Carolina after Jackson sued. And other lawsuits challenging Trump's efforts to cancel medical research grants or disaster relief aid are still underway.
The claims Jackson and other challengers made in the lawsuit over the canceled solar grants mirror those in the other lawsuits.
The president is in charge of executing the nation's laws, they argue, so he can't just refuse to spend money that Congress has already ordered to be spent.
Trump contends that he does have the power to do just that. He signed an executive order in August giving political appointees more say over which grants should or shouldn't be paid out, based on his political priorities.
"Since Day One, President Trump has prioritized eliminating waste and fraud in the federal government, ensuring federal spending aligns with American interests," that executive order said.