“Can he really do that?” To anybody who paid attention during President Donald Trump’s norm-shaking first term, that should be a familiar question. And hours into his second, it started coming up once again.
As part of a flurry of day-one executive orders, Trump paused funding from two key Biden-era initiatives aimed at subsidizing the rollout of EV charging stations. The action, titled “Terminating the Green New Deal,” halted the disbursement of funds from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) programs, casting a cloud of uncertainty over billions of dollars that Congress earmarked to help build out charging infrastructure.
NEVI may not be a household name, but over the past few years, the $5 billion program established by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has added an array of EV fast chargers across the country. While its rollout has been slower than some expected, it’s setting the stage for long-term electric car infrastructure in America. CFI arms the Federal Highway Administration with another $2.5 billion to build out both slow and fast chargers, with an emphasis on underserved communities.
On its face, ending these programs sounds like bad news for both current and future EV owners. Charging your car out in the wild isn’t exactly a walk in the park for many, and that’s the exact problem these billions are supposed to fix. But can Trump stop EV charging push in its tracks?
Not alone or easily, climate policy experts say.
“While the rhetoric may grab headlines, the reality is far more complicated,” Beth Hammon, a senior advocate for EV infrastructure at the Natural Resources Defense Council said in a blog post. “These programs are legally entrenched, widely supported, and designed to withstand political turbulence.”
Photo by: Mercedes-Benz
Trump is a clear wild card here. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s bent or broken the rules as president. In a Monday memo, the White House Office of Management and Budget ordered a sweeping freeze on trillions of dollars worth of federal spending, sparking a lawsuit from a coalition of state attorneys general.
Yet both NEVI and CFI were created through bipartisan legislation. And since they were established by Congress, they can’t just be torn up or permanently paused by a new presidential administration that doesn’t feel like they jibe with its “drill, baby, drill” mentality. The same Trump order that called out EV charging initiatives also directed a broad freeze on funds from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, otherwise known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
“An executive order can’t expand the President’s power, or overrule a duly passed law like the IRA or the IIJA,” Martin Lockman, a climate law fellow at Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, told InsideEVs. “Projects that already have agreements in place have legally defensible rights, and those rights don’t disappear just because President Trump used broad words.”
Photo by: Lucid Motors
Furthermore, the way the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was designed makes the charging programs durable, said Andrew Wishnia, a senior vice president at Boundary Stone Partners and the former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate Policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The NEVI program’s primary goal is to create a nationwide network of fast chargers along major highways. The program has yielded 51 active stations and 224 charging ports across 14 states so far, according to Paren, an EV charging data analytics firm. In all, states have awarded at least $615 million to build 999 sites with some 4,600 charging ports, the firm says. There’s good reason to believe the billions in unspent NEVI funding are relatively safe from interference.
NEVI funding is approved annually based on plans that each state submits, and the first four years of funds (for fiscal years 2022 through 2025) have already been apportioned by the Department of Transportation, said Wishnia, who helped architect the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. That means the money is with the states and would need to be clawed back, he said.
Photo by: Electrify America
In addition, NEVI works via “advanced appropriations,” meaning that Congress authorized five years of funds at once, Wishnia said. If the president wanted to rescind charging funds appropriated by Congress, he could submit a rescission bill. But it would need to pass the Senate, which Republicans control by only a slim margin. Meanwhile, the IIJA passed with 69 votes in the Senate—charger funding and all.
“There is no mechanism, no legal mechanism, that has a snowball’s chance in hell of actually happening under the current makeup of the U.S. Senate,” said Andrew Rogers, a senior vice president at Boundary Stone Partners and a former Deputy Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration.
Rogers and Wishnia expect NEVI to continue chugging along as planned, despite the threats from Trump.
CFI funds are even more secure. They’re “lockboxed,” as Wishnia puts it, as part of the Highway Trust Fund that’s been around for decades. Since that grant program also covers natural gas, propane and hydrogen infrastructure, the Trump administration could in theory decide to deprioritize EV charging, though.
The 90-day pause in funding disbursements can’t just go on forever. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 states that a president can’t hold back federal money that Congress has authorized. So Trump and his political appointees can’t indefinitely stall or slow-walk funding for EV chargers.
“It would be illegal to do so. I mean, there’s just no other way to say it,” Wishnia said. “There was a bipartisan group of senators, Republican and Democrat, that came to an agreement as to what should be in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and what should not be. And so you can’t just take what you don’t want and not implement it. That’s not how our system works. That would be tantamount to a different law that did not pass.”
Photo by: Electrify America
The move has drawn the ire of Democratic lawmakers, like Patty Murray of Washington, Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“Make no mistake: if Trump goes ahead and holds up funding that has been signed into law, it won’t just be illegal—it will hurt families, halt projects to rebuild America’s roads and bridges, kill good-paying new jobs, and so much more,” Murray said in a statement on Friday. “What’s happening here should be alarming to anyone who cares about the separation of powers clearly laid out in our Constitution. Congress—not the president—has the power of the purse.”
The Office of Management and Budget, which is responsible for reviewing NEVI and CFI, didn’t respond to questions from InsideEVs about what changes it might recommend. A spokesperson for the Federal Highway Administration, which administers the programs, said the agency is complying with the order, but didn’t answer questions about what exactly that means.
Charging companies aren’t sure what the future holds. Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren, said many firms feel confident that most NEVI money is safe, while others are nervous about the fate of funding. Regardless of what happens, America’s charging networks will keep expanding, he said.
Photo by: Revel
A Revel charging station in Manhattan.
In a recent interview, Frank Reig, CEO of the Brooklyn-based charging and ride-hailing firm Revel, told InsideEVs that federal support for charging stations is nice to have, but not critical to its business. The startup plans to apply for the upcoming round of NEVI funding in New York.
“When it comes to NEVI and CFI, we’re going to continue to apply until we hear otherwise,” he said.
For now, though, Trump’s war on EVs is mostly theater, as Vox put it. Interfering with charging funds will be extremely difficult. Getting rid of EV tax incentives will take buy-in from Congress. And rewriting the EPA’s tailpipe emissions regulations will require a lengthy rule-making process.
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Correction 1/28/25 4pm ET: This story incorrectly stated that rescission bills require a 60-vote Senate majority. They can pass with a simple majority.
