Biden-appointed judge orders Trump to keep throwing money at EV chargers

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from withholding billions of dollars in funding for electric vehicle (EV) charger infrastructure from 14 states.

U.S. District Judge Tana Lin partially granted a preliminary injunction that was intended to unlock funding for the EV charger buildout. The ruling comes after President Donald Trump’s Department of Transportation (DOT) in February announced that it was halting billions of dollars in funding for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program, a $5 billion dollar program that was established by the Biden administration to install a network of EV chargers across the United States.

In May, 16 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for withholding the funds for the buildout of new EV chargers, alleging the administration did not have the authority to withhold the funds.

“Congress appropriated $5 billion to fund a National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (‘NEVI’) Formula Program, the purpose of which was — and still is — ‘to strategically deploy electric vehicle charging infrastructure and to establish an interconnected network to facilitate data collection, access, and reliability,’” according to Lin’s order.

The order does not apply to Minnesota, the District of Columbia and Vermont, which she ruled did not prove that they would be faced with “irreparable harm” if the funds were not immediately unlocked. Still, the Trump administration has until July 2 to appeal the ruling.

Former President Joe Biden notably led a sweeping effort to subsidize the production and adoption of EVs during his sole term. Though the Biden administration vowed to roll out a network of half a million EV chargers across the U.S. by 2030 through the NEVI program, the move faced a spate of slowdowns and logistical hurdles.

Biden appointed Lin to the federal bench in 2021. In an April 2021 press release announcing several of Biden’s judicial nominations, including Lin, the White House wrote that the candidates “speak to the President’s strong belief that the federal judiciary should reflect the proud diversity of the nation, both in terms of personal and professional backgrounds.”

“Another day, another liberal judicial activist making nonsensical rulings from the bench because they hate President Trump,” a DOT spokesperson said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The Biden-[former Transportation Secretary Pete] Buttigieg NEVI program  guidance was a disaster and failed miserably to deliver EV chargers. While we assess our legal options, the order does not stop our ongoing work to reform the program so it actually works for the American people, which continues apace.”

A White House spokesperson told the DCNF that since the NEVI Formula Program was enacted, approximately 84% of the program’s funds remain unobligated and 75% of the states that filed the lawsuit to block the DOT’s review have failed to spend even a third of the funds that they have received.