A federal judge in Washington temporarily barred Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin from terminating billions of dollars in grants to climate groups after he expressed concern that the financial funding was riddled with waste and corruption.

The Environmental Protection Agency can't have back climate grants issued during the Biden administration, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, but the grantees cannot access the money either.

The move comes just one day before a federal judge will hold a hearing in a lawsuit brought by one of the grant recipients seeking access to the funds held in a Citibank account that the Trump administration had frozen while it probed the program.