Exclusives

EXCLUSIVE: Red-State AG Sounds Alarm About Possibility Taxpayers Were On Hook To Benefit China

[Wikimedia Commons/Public/Donghae Fang]

Republican Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird pressed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Friday about whether American tax dollars were used to support projects benefiting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Bird asked in the letter, exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, whether American tax dollars were ever funneled through the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) under the Biden administration to support institutions with ties to the CCP. Bird raised concerns about the ELI’s close relationships with Chinese government entities and demanded the EPA disclose whether any American grants were used to benefit Chinese institutions.

“China has no right to raise lowans’ –or any Americans’–gas and electric bills. The Biden administration allowed the EPA to team up with radical activists funded by China. Those activists wanted to stop American energy dominance and raise the cost of gas and electricity. This letter is a follow-up to ensure that is no longer happening,” Bird said in a statement.

“ELI has never received funding from the Chinese government,” an ELI spokesperson told the DCNF.

While ELI maintains that some of their Chinese-involved projects did receive American taxpayer funding, they insist that this money was used to hold China accountable and improve Chinese environmental regulations, not to provide China any competitive advantage over the U.S.

Non-profit research organization State Armor published a report July 2 detailing ELI’s involvement with China, alleging that ELI initiatives gave China damaging insight into American environmental regulations and increased U.S. reliance on Chinese supply chains. Furthermore, the report claims it cannot identify a single binding Chinese commitment towards environmental regulation attributable to ELI.

“ELI’s entire operation attacking American energy resilience is damaging to our national security. Most egregious is ELI’s dual-track approach of helping Chinese officials understand, navigate, and front-run American environmental regulations while simultaneously advancing radical policies and climate litigation that weaken American energy production and increase our dependence on Chinese supply chains. The EPA should provide a full accounting of its past funding of ELI and determine whether taxpayer dollars were used to support projects benefiting the Chinese government and China’s geopolitical strategy,” State Armor CEO Michael Lucci said in a statement.

Bird described a potentially problematic ELI program in her letter.

“ELI […] operates the China International Business Dialogue on Environmental Governance (“CIBDEG”), which gives the Chinese government information and analysis concerning industry practices, American and European environmental regulation, and informs about the concerns of multinational businesses operating in China,” Bird said in her letter.

Others concerned with ELI’s involvement with China supported Bird’s letter.

“The Environmental Law Institute’s well-documented efforts to shape judicial rulings in environmental cases that harm American energy producers through their so-called education efforts, paired with their questionable ties to Chinese institutions connected to the CCP, may represent a new form of the Red-Green alliance,” chair of POLARIS National Security, Cale Brown, said in a statement.

The ELI characterizes its work with China differently.

“Over its more than 50-year history, ELI has worked in more than 100 countries to advance environmental protection by making law work for people, places, and the planet. Our work in China was no different. ELI’s most recent work there, which ended in 2024, focused on communicating the concerns of U.S. companies about environmental regulation in China. Through grants from the U.S. Department of State and U.S.-based philanthropic organizations, ELI also helped Chinese public officials and nongovernmental organizations strengthen environmental enforcement and hold Chinese companies accountable for environmental damage,” an ELI spokesperson told the DCNF.

“The Trump EPA has and will continue to conduct a thorough and individual review of all funding, especially grants and agreements from the prior administration. In this process, we have already canceled a number of unnecessary grants to the Environmental Law Institute (ELI). Four ELI grants were terminated on Dec. 22, 2025, and a fifth grant was ended early on Aug. 30, 2026. EPA currently has no active grants with ELI,” an EPA spokesperson told the DCNF.

The letter follows a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing probing ELI’s involvement with China, and 23 state AGs requesting that ELI’s government grants be cancelled.

“The Environmental Law Institute’s access to American taxpayer dollars, paired with its documented ties to Chinese Communist Party–linked institutions, demands immediate scrutiny. Under China’s national intelligence laws, Chinese organizations must support and cooperate with state intelligence work — refusal carries enforcement consequences. More directly, ELI’s deliberate engagement with Chinese government institutions, including a program that furnishes Beijing with analysis of American regulatory practice, raises serious questions about the access and influence these relationships provide the regime. Attorney General Bird deserves credit for demanding answers and ensuring American taxpayer dollars never underwrite our foreign adversaries that are working to undermine our system,” Josh Hodges, commissioner on the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission, said in a statement.