For four years, the Environmental Protection Agency has made environmental justice one of its top priorities, working to improve health conditions in heavily polluted communities that are often largely made up of Black, Latino and low-income Americans. Now that short-lived era is over.
President Donald Trump in his first week eliminated a team of White House advisers tasked with ensuring the entire federal government supported communities near bulky industry, ports and roads. Trump has abolished the Justice40 initiative launched by the Biden administration. It required that 40% of proceeds from certain environmental programs go to hardest-hit communities.
As the government reviews modern plants now, experts say officials are likely to ignore that the pollution they create could worsen what communities are already experiencing. Trump’s actions will likely result in a halt to funding from the Biden administration’s flagship climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, for climate programs and environmental justice.
When Trump made that decision this week, he eliminated Clinton-era federal policy that had made the administration’s priority on solving environmental health problems for low-income groups and minorities. He also withdrew the country from the Paris Agreement to combat climate change.
According to Joe Luppino-Esposito, director of federal policy at the free-market law firm Pacific Legal Foundation, the modern administration’s actions combine two goals: rolling back what Trump officials call burdensome environmental policies that restrict development, and the Fight against diversity, justice and inclusion.
“We have had this discussion in the Supreme Court and elsewhere for many years. Past discrimination is no excuse for future discrimination,” he said, adding that Trump’s executive orders allow the law to be enforced “without a specific racial tinge.”
Many experts say Biden has accomplished more in this area than any previous administration.
For example, an EPA-funded study found that black people of all income levels are more likely to inhale pollutants that cause heart and lung problems. Under Biden, regulators wrote public health rules, tougher air pollution standards and proposed rules on harmful lead pipes. The EPA imposed the largest fine ever under the federal Clean Air Act, saying it curbed more than 225 million pounds of air pollution in congested communities. Federal grants went to communities to spotless up Superfund sites or buy low-emission school buses. The EPA established an office to facilitate its extensive environmental justice work.
“What concerns me right now is both the sadness of these losses and the fact that just a few weeks ago we had an upswing, if you will,” said Jade Begay, an indigenous rights and climate activist in New Mexico.
For years, government support for grassroots environmental justice efforts ebbed and flowed depending on who occupied the White House. Local groups, sometimes with the support of foundations, found ways to still do their work. According to Christophe Courchesne, a law professor and interim director of the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law and Graduate School, the Biden administration has invested time, attention and resources into the issue to raise awareness of it — and make it a bigger target.
Environmental justice has been drawn into “this open fight for diversity, equity and inclusion,” Courchesne said. “This evolved over time into a target of conservative activism.”
Daniel Gall, an EPA spokesman, said the agency under Trump would advocate for spotless air, spotless land and spotless water.
“EPA is working diligently to implement President Trump’s orders,” he said.
The policy changes are different from the last time Trump was president. Scott Pruitt, who led the EPA for a time during Trump’s first term, once called conversations about environmental justice “critical to improving environmental and health outcomes.” Trump’s modern orders are more far-reaching; Measures that Rena Payan, program director for the nonprofit Justice Outside in Oakland, California, called “a rollback of decades of progress in combating environmental discrimination.”
In addition to abandoning longstanding policies, the Trump administration is directing agencies to eliminate jobs that address issues of environmental justice and diversity, equity and inclusion, according to a recent memo.
They are not restricted to public spaces. According to Julius Redd, an environmental lawyer at Beveridge & Diamond PC, the modern administration is also seeking to stifle diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the private sector – a move that goes further than some expected
Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, which supports communities at the heart of the petrochemical industry, joined other advocates in saying the Biden administration has done some great things but hasn’t done nearly enough to enforce the law, which is helping polluters allowed too much free rein in heavily industrialized Louisiana.
Now things are getting worse and an already industry-friendly state is likely to cause polluters to settle even more quickly. “We just need to buckle up and get ready,” she said.
For Ash LaMont, national campaign director for Honor The Earth, a nonprofit focused on raising awareness and support for environmental issues in Native American communities, this change is disheartening.
“We spent a lot of time really figuring out what our next step is, what we can do to sustain through the administration, and what the very obvious needs of our community members are,” she said.
Trump’s decision to end support will hurt, but many of these local organizations will once again operate without federal support, said Peggy Shepard, co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice in New York.
Advocacy will shift to the state and local levels. That could work in some places, but it will be an uphill battle in Republican-controlled states like Louisiana and Texas, where there is little receptivity to this advocacy, she said.
“They finally got support at the EPA and the White House,” she said, “and that’s a huge step backwards for the communities that are on the front lines of some of these issues.”
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St. John reported from Detroit.
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Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed reporting from Washington.
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