Rewiring America, a nonprofit that works to promote affordable home electrification, said today it will lay off 28% of its workforce as a direct result of the Trump administration’s refusal to disburse federal grant funds.
The organization was part of a coalition of nonprofits awarded $2 billion by the Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency, but has been unable to access those “competitively and lawfully awarded grant dollars” since February, founder and CEO Ari Matusiak wrote on LinkedIn today.
“Unfortunately, we are now forced to act financially as though the GGRF award does not exist,” Matusiak said in a letter to staff.
Without that funding, he said, Rewiring America will narrow its scope and adjust strategy. That will include building a “digital, community marketplace that gives households access to low cost and high quality electric upgrades,” he said. “We will use that marketplace to attract investment from third parties like hyperscalers, utilities and manufacturers, further lowering costs for families.”
The first 100 days of the Trump administration have been challenging and volatile, Matusiak continued, but Rewiring America “is not going anywhere.”
Upheaval over the GGRF
The National Clean Investment Fund, the program through which Rewiring America and its coalition were awarded their grant, is funded by the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created by the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022.
The majority of the GGRF was obligated in 2024, but by the time of Trump’s election had largely yet to be deployed. Ken LaRoe, CEO and founder of Climate First Bank, told Latitude Media in the weeks pre-election that the banks, developers, and nonprofits like Rewiring America were “scared to death” of a Trump win; presciently, they anticipated the funding would be compromised.
Trump’s Unleashing American Energy executive order, which he signed on the administration’s first day in office, ordered federal agencies to “immediately pause” the disbursement of funds appropriated through the IRA and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. That order mandated that offices review and submit reports on billions of dollars of funds, including those that had been allocated and had signed contracts.
The Office of Management and Budget then issued a memo clarifying that projects favored by the administration, including oil and gas, critical minerals, and nuclear energy, would move quickly through the review process.
Upheaval over the GGRF specifically was the reason for a key federal prosecutor’s resignation just a month into Trump’s second term. Denise Cheung, the veteran prosecutor who headed the Justice Department’s criminal division, resigned after the Trump-appointed deputy attorney general asked her to open a criminal investigation into a private institution where the GGRF funds were allegedly “parked.” (Having federal banks handle the federal government’s financial transactions has long been standard practice.)
The situation was ultimately subject to litigation; in February, Judge Loren AliKhan of Washington D.C. issued a preliminary injunction that barred the Trump administration from continuing its funding freeze in any form.
And at least the EPA confirmed it had unfrozen all grant funding from the Inflation Reduction Act; at the time, other GGRF recipients, including the Nevada Clean Energy Fund, told Floodlight News that they were able to access their funds.
