The Trump administration is waging a full-on attack on environmental justice (EJ) work in the federal government, including removing public data and information, putting staff on administrative leave, and eliminating programs that directly support communities, all without input from those most impacted. This means that the lived experience of so many overburdened communities, which tend to be primarily low income or communities of color, are being ignored and set aside.
As defined by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as of January 19, 2025, environmental justice is “the just treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of income, race, color, national origin, Tribal affiliation, or disability, in agency decision-making and other Federal activities that affect human health and the environment.” Evidence from stories, photos, historical documents, and research studies supports and informs this work. There are decades of evidence supporting the existence of environmental injustice and centuries of science that confirm the existence of health disparities. In the words of Neil deGrasse Tyson, “science is true regardless of whether or not someone believes in it.” If we take facts and evidence seriously, if we listen to both the abundance of scientific evidence and the lived experience of EJ advocates and frontline communities (defined as the communities most impacted by climate change or environmental injustice), it’s simply incomprehensible to ignore the disproportionate impacts on historically harmed communities.
Environmental injustice is not a talking point. It’s an approach rooted in longstanding evidence of health disparities, and it’s necessary to ensure that people who have been historically underrepresented have access to clean water, air, and land. It’s important to look at the harmful—and let’s say it, cruel—actions being carried out by the Trump administration that erase the policies and programs that respond to environmental injustice. The more we know, the more able we will be to oppose these attacks and rebuild.
Attacks by executive order
In its first few weeks, the second Trump administration has enacted multiple executive orders (EOs) aimed at decreasing or eliminating environmental justice work in the federal government and its consideration in federal decision-making. Executive orders are written directives that set priorities for federal agencies, and guidance documents give those agencies direction on how to carry out their work. In response to the Trump administration’s environmental justice EOs, the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued guidance stating that staff working on programs related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) would be put on administrative leave, and associated programs and offices would be terminated. The targeted programs ensure that government staff represent the diversity of the American public; that these staff ensure that government programs consider all people, and that government services that protect potable water, manage sewage, and safeguard clean air are accessible to everyone, including marginalized and historically disinvested groups and communities. In addition to the negative implications of these directives, the language used by this administration around dismantling DEIA and environmental justice programs is inaccurate, misleading, and harmful.
You may have noted that in the EO calling for the dismissal of DEIA and environmental justice staff, offices, and programs, the phrase environmental justice is in quotes. These are what’s sometimes called “scare quotes.” The use of scare quotes, as the MLA style center describes, is meant to “convey an ironic, skeptical, or even derisive stance toward the word or phrase they enclose.” By doing so, the Office of the President has communicated a dismissive attitude to the entire concept of environmental justice, an attitude that signals that they’ll ignore these harms instead of working to solve them. It’s a seemingly small—but illustrative and potentially harmful—decision of how to use this language.
Attacks by rescinding past executive orders
Presidents can create new requirements for the federal agencies they direct, but they can also take away existing EOs from past presidents. The current Trump administration rescinded many past EOs that sought to provide services and fair access to government decision-making to those who have been historically underrepresented.
One of these EOs, EO 12898 (Federal Actions To Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations), was enacted by former President Bill Clinton, and required federal agencies to include EJ in their missions, research, and programs. It required agencies to identify and address harmful inequalities—for example, areas where air pollution levels are higher. It also required federal agencies to conduct their programs in ways that didn’t exclude people, directing them to include diverse populations in research and data and increase access to public meetings and comment opportunities for a broader range of communities. Finally, it required that federal agencies conduct assessments that better align with how people actually live, such as using higher-than-average hunting and fishing rates to reflect accurate food-based toxic exposures.
Former President Joe Biden enacted three EOs that added specifics and lessons learned to the previous Clinton EO. Executive Order 13985 (Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government), and then EO 14091 (Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government) added an acknowledgement that some populations in the US have not had equal access to engage in government decision-making and were not well reflected in the assessments that inform these decisions. These EOs required federal agencies to develop assessment methods to include these populations (e.g. rural poor, Tribal communities, and communities of color) and plans to address inequalities found in the results. It also called for a whole-of-government approach, which is coordination of multiple governmental agencies and their collective decision-making authorities. All of these important EOs were rescinded by President Trump.
Another EJ-related EO from the Biden administration, EO 14096 (Revitalizing Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All), acknowledges the rights of all Americans to environmental quality and justice. It directed assessments of inequality to consider cumulative impacts, climate impacts, and historic and systemic barriers to equity and justice. The EO also called for federal agencies to evaluate and document their legal authorities to address environmental injustice. It linked civil rights to big environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The EO also created a requirement that entities receiving federal funds consider equity, and it set up the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council to review this work. As a result of this EO, federal agencies integrated equity into their strategic plans through documents called equity action plans that specified how federal agencies would integrate equity into their programs. Also as a result of this EO, federal agencies finalized their EJ Scorecards and created tools that described their EJ work; the White House published a report on the science of EJ describing studies and data that would be useful to move EJ forward. This EO, too, was quickly rescinded.
Ensuring government services are reaching areas of greatest need is good and effective governance, and the elimination of these programs nullifies that effort. The erasure of equity work by the Trump administration disrupts actions to bring clean air, water, and land to communities overburdened with pollution, and puts these communities’ health at risk. It’s a willful decision to just deny problems instead of working toward real-world solutions.
A cascade of office and position terminations
As a result of the rescinded and new EOs, US Department of Justice employees were told that positions in the Environment and Natural Resources Division would be eliminated. This department is tasked with defending the federal government’s environmental actions in court, ensuring that these laws have real force.
Employees in the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, housed in the US Department of Health and Human Services, were put on administrative leave in late January. The office, which is now closed, drew connections between greenhouse gas emissions and health disparities. And in the third week of the Trump administration, 168 staff from the EPA Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights were told that their positions would be eliminated. Yet, even without an overhaul or termination of these EJ positions and offices, erasure of DEIA capacity will harm the people these agencies are tasked to serve.
Attacks on EJ funding
The freeze on grant funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act was one of the immediate harmful impacts of the Trump administration on communities. These grants and other frozen monies were previously appropriated by the U.S. Congress, and a presidential move to pull back these funds without due process in Congress is unconstitutional. Many grants remained frozen even after federal court actions rescinded the funding freeze. Some of these grants were bringing solar power to low-income neighborhoods, educating communities about protections from extreme heat and flooding, and providing trucks and locomotives that emit less air pollution.
The National Science Foundation—an independent agency of the US government that supports research and education in science and engineering—is reviewing their grants in light of the Trump EOs that attack environmental justice, flagging research projects and grant submissions that include words like “equity” and “excluded.” The National Institutes of Health, which provides nearly $48 billion in biomedical research grant money, withheld and reviewed their grants in order to comply with the DEIA censorship EO, leaving grants related to EJ in question. Withholding these grants, and pulling researchers off already-submitted publications to censor and attack research related justice and equity, has caused uncertainty in the scientific community and harmful interruptions in the scientific process. It’s wasteful and short-sighted, and could cause long-term harm to the ability to carry out useful scientific research.
Erasing data and information
Websites have been taken down across the federal government’s webpages. There is usually some change to public-facing web content as administrations change, but this degree of censorship impairs science and medicine. For example, the Department of Energy’s previous EJ webpage now redirects to an ‘Energy Dominance’ webpage that states it is returning the department “to regular order.” Many other websites, like the previous environmental justice webpage of HHS, simply display the now-common message “This site cannot be reached.”
Multiple screening tools, such as the former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Environmental Justice Index, the U.S. EPA’s Climate and Environmental Justice Screening Tool and EJ SCREEN tool, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality Environmental Justice Scorecard have all been erased from federal government websites, and this list just goes on and on. These tools were used to direct government programs and resources to communities that have been historically disinvested, communities most overburdened with social, environmental and health burdens, and communities most impacted by policy decisions. Using these types of cross-disciplinary screening tools to prioritize and evaluate work allows government agencies to better understand the landscape of the country and direct funding to the places it is needed most.
Non-profit groups across the country have organized to salvage these useful federal tools. My colleague shares efforts to preserve federal data here, and you can find many of the federal EJ tools here. UCS is also hosting science and EJ resources removed from federal government pages here. And do not forget that there are many state and city EJ tools that may be useful in an era when we can no longer rely on government websites to provide federal data to the public.
What can people do?
With these rescinded and new EOs, the Trump administration is erasing years of work and severely weakening structures of our government that exist to decrease the environmental harms that disproportionately impact communities of color and low-income communities. These structures need to exist. There’s nothing “efficient” or “effective” about these attacks—they simply undermine the government’s capacity to understand what’s happening, meet people’s needs, and solve real-world problems.
At UCS, we put rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future. Supporting environmental justice work is a natural priority for UCS, and we’re paying close attention to what’s happening on the federal level. It’s important that these attacks are documented and countered, and that all of us stand in solidarity with the EJ advocates who are fighting for their communities. How can you help?
You can follow trackers like the Harvard Law Federal Environmental Justice Tracker and the Silencing Science Tracker.
You can find, engage with, and support a local EJ organization. There are some ideas here.
You can organize around more holistic environmental protection in your state, community or local government using this Community Guide and engage with state legislative efforts here.
You can also join this action to tell Congress to oppose Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional power grab.