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51 Colum. J. Env't L. 1 (2026)

handle is hein.journals/cjel51 and id is 1 raw text is: The Destruction of the Climate Spending State Adam D. Orford* The Biden Administration bet big on spending laws to forward its climate policies, creating a novel climate spending state in a field previously approached primarily through regulation. But the second Trump Administration, building on an aggressive theory of Presidential power, with support from bicameral Congressional majorities and a sympathetic Supreme Court, has dismantled the climate spending state with startling ease and speed. Although degradation of the federal workforce and legislative alterations to the tax code have played their part, it is the Trump Administration's refusal to administer the spending laws enacted by prior Congresses that has had the most disruptive and immediate impact, and which has suddenly brought the obscure law of federal appropriations to the forefront of national legal consciousness. A detailed analysis of the ongoing destruction of the climate spending state reveals a sophisticated strategy of Presidential impoundment, administrative unilateralism, aggressive litigation, and Executive influence over Congress's spendingpower, in a manner never before seen in the United States. The radical transformation of legal norms in budgetary processes has implications far beyond climate law, to the very fabric of the U.S. constitutional order. I. In tro d u ctio n .......................................................................................................... 3 A. The Climate Spending State-BIL and IRA's System................. 6 B. Impoundment-The Presidential Power to Refuse to Spend ........ 10 C. The Second Trump Administration's Impoundment Playbook .... 18 II. Ending Climate Spending through Executive Action.................... 19 * Adam D. Orford, Associate Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law. Thanks to the participants of the Berkeley/Penn Energy Law Scholars Workshop and the Fordham Law faculty for their insightful comments on early drafts of this piece 1