In August 2025, Trump's Environmental Protection Agency canceled Solar for All — a $7 billion program meant to help more than 900,000 lower-income households get solar power and cut their electric bills.
On Friday, September 18, a federal judge ruled that the EPA broke the law doing it.
"The Trump administration illegally terminated a $7 billion Solar for All program intended to make solar power accessible to more than 900,000 lower-income Americans, a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled Friday," the Associated Press reported.
What the judge found
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin pulled the money after Trump's budget bill passed Congress in July 2025, calling the program a "boondoggle."
U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy disagreed. She wrote that Congress clearly intended the EPA to keep running the Solar for All grants that had already been committed. The EPA, she found, acted "contrary to this intent, and with no other statutory authority," when it ended the program. She vacated the termination.
The EPA said it is reviewing the decision and considering whether to appeal.
Who got hurt
Solar for All was built to bring solar power to lower-income households. New York alone had been awarded $249.8 million, according to its attorney general, which called the program a way to reach "more than 900,000 low-income households nationwide."
In Nevada, the EPA canceled a $156 million solar grant that promised low-income households a 20% cut in their electric bills — one piece of the up to $177 billion in federal money the Trump administration has cut, frozen or slowed after promising it to all 50 states.
The cancellation also hit jobs. The lead plaintiff in the Rhode Island case was the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, the state's labor federation. "If and when the program does get up and running, there will be thousands and thousands of union jobs created across the United States," its president, Patrick Crowley, told the AP.
"Nearly every family is looking for ways to cut their energy bill," said Alex St. Pierre of the Conservation Law Foundation, one of the groups representing the plaintiffs. "These dollars should go where Congress intended: toward lower energy bills, less climate pollution, good jobs and cleaner air."
This is how the EPA keeps treating clean energy
Solar for All wasn't a lone target. It was part of the $27 billion "green bank," formally the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which Congress created in 2022. The Trump administration canceled the other $20 billion too — money meant for eight community lenders and nonprofits to fund everything from home energy upgrades to community cooling projects.
Courts have ruled against the administration on this before. Last month, a divided federal appeals court ruled that the administration improperly terminated the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. More than a dozen state attorneys general also sued over Solar for All; a federal judge in Washington dismissed their case in June for lack of jurisdiction, and they have appealed.
It fits a pattern at Zeldin's EPA. The agency is also scrapping the limits on carbon pollution from power plants — a move 17 Republicans on our report cards pushed for.
And it's happening while solar is winning on its own. In May, for the first time, solar supplied more of the nation's electricity than coal, the AP reported.
What it adds up to
Trump's EPA canceled Solar for All, a $7 billion program meant to bring solar power to more than 900,000 lower-income households, calling it a "boondoggle." A federal judge has now ruled the EPA had no legal authority to do it and that Congress clearly meant the already-committed grants to continue — and the EPA is weighing an appeal while families wait for the lower bills the program was built to deliver.
Sources
This post is based on the Associated Press's reporting, republished by The Washington Sun, and on Judge McElroy's memorandum and order in Rhode Island AFL-CIO v. EPA, No. 1:25-cv-00510 (D.R.I. Sept. 18, 2026). Photo: Joshua A. Bickel/AP.
