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Last year, the Ritenour School District in Missouri won a $9.5 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, to replace its worn-out diesel school buses with clean-running electric models.
By mid-January, the buses were almost there: waiting at a dealer’s lot, just an hour away. All the district had to do was withdraw its grant money and make the last payment.
Then President Trump took office, and the E.P.A. refused to let the district take the money. The agency is still refusing, despite two court orders telling the Trump administration to end a freeze on federal grants.
The buses have not moved an inch.
“The buses are 52 miles away from us in small-town Illinois, and we can’t get them here,” said Chris Kilbride, the superintendent of the Ritenour district, which educates 6,500 students in the St. Louis suburbs.
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The Trump administration is still freezing an unknown number of federal grants, according to nonprofits, government agencies and other recipients who say they cannot get access to money promised to them by past administrations.
