The New York Times would have us pity the creatures who find themselves high and dry when the Washington swamp recedes just a few inches.
An April 21 article lamented the plight of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s almost 16,000 laid-off employees and the “estimated 280,000 contractors, partners and local hires worldwide” affected by its demise.
The Times cited Sheryl Cowan as one of those harmed by President Donald Trump’s shuttering of USAID. She lost her job, earning “$272,000 a year as a senior VP at a U.S.A.I.D.-funded nonprofit.” That nonprofit reportedly spent $28 million yearly on salaries and benefits to distribute … $4 million a year in grants.
The article rightly noted (though without irony), “When the Trump administration dismantled the sprawling global aid agency last year, it wiped out virtually an entire industry.” The swamp is large. It contains multitudes. It creates industries to dispose of the wealth that taxpayers send.
And it self-perpetuates. It attracts special-interest groups and activists, lawyers by the thousands, rent-seeking companies and charlatans eager to make a buck selling government on the latest fad.
The swamp flourished and grew during the Biden administration. It was a great time to peddle fashionable DEI training to the federal government. The former president’s grand “net-zero” climate plans made it a great time to hawk climate consulting services, set up windmills and solar farms and build EVs. And establishing “green banks.”
The story of the “Greendoggle,” the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, neatly captures the swamp at its most robustly primordial. It was part of the hilariously named Inflation Reduction Act and appropriated more than $20 billion to be doled out as grants to nonprofits, which would then disburse them to other entities that would ostensibly use the funds to fund a variety of clean energy initiatives.
The $20 billion far exceeded the EPA’s entire annual budget, was appropriated without a commensurate increase in oversight and had to be spent by September 2024.
Protect the Public’s Trust obtained the reviews of the applications of three organizations that received a total of $14 billion. On criterion after criterion, reviewers noted that required information was missing (in one case, financial statements). Many comments included some version of “not enough detail is offered.” Processes were not described, and goals were “not measurable.”
These applications would have been laughed out of a private-sector office. But not the EPA, and especially not with the deep ties between the Biden Environmental Protection Agency and nongovernmental organizations at every level of the recipient consortia. Congressional overseers expressed “concerns that the Biden administration is using this program to advance partisan interests and enrich political allies.”
That leads to another means the swamp has of regenerating. As Protect the Public’s Trust has documented, the revolving door between government and nongovernmental organizations spins particularly fast in the environmental/climate sector of the swamp.
One $2 billion grant recipient, Power Forward Communities, is a coalition of non-governmental organizations formed solely to access the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. It was associated with Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams and several former Obama administration figures. (Awarded despite a reviewer commenting on Power Forward Communities’ application, “The salary structure for top officers seems high for a nonprofit — or rather high enough that it merits some explanation.”)
The Climate United Fund got almost $7 billion. Its board included Barack Obama’s secretary of transportation, a former Biden appointee and a former Democratic Party California state treasurer. Climate United Fund’s reviewers mentioned the high salaries of its leadership.
Reviewers thought the Coalition for Green Capital’s salaries were lavish, too. Coalition for Green Capital got $5 billion in taxpayer funds — low considering its board boasted former Biden appointee Cecilia Martinez and David Hayes, once Biden’s White House special assistant for climate policy, who swears he didn’t help create the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund before returning to his old post at Coalition for Green Capital to enjoy its largesse.
Tracy Stone-Manning was director of the Biden Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, despite ties to a 1980s environmental group. During her tenure, BLM did its best to hinder U.S. energy production — canceling mining and drilling leases, raising fees on energy companies and restricting future resource development on huge swaths of federal land.
These all happened to align with the priorities of environmentalist groups such as The Wilderness Society. It wasn’t terribly shocking, therefore, when Stone-Manning became the president of The Wilderness Society in 2025. Her predecessor earned $449,985 in 2024. It pays to know people.
The swamp remains because it is very lucrative.
Michael Chamberlain is the director of Protect the Public’s Trust. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.
