The incoming Trump administration is expected to make sweeping moves to eradicate environmental justice (EJ) from EPA and other agencies, including quickly revoking Biden-era executive orders (EOs) and EPA guidance, sources say, with some warning that President-elect Donald Trump may even revoke a landmark Clinton-era EJ order first establishing EPA and other agencies’ EJ programs.
One industry attorney following the issue says there is no doubt Trump will pull the Biden EOs and sees “a very strong chance” he will also revoke Clinton’s sweeping 1994 document, EO 12898, which Biden updated as EO 14096 in April 2023.
This source also believes EPA’s new national Office of Environmental Justice & External Civil Rights (OEJECR) will not survive.
EPA will have to dedicate staff to address external civil rights based on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the source says, though that program could also be dramatically narrowed.
But “there is no specific mandate” for EPA to have an EJ office beyond the Clinton order, the source notes.
The EPA chapter of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which provides a policy blueprint for the incoming Trump administration, calls for “returning the agency’s EJ functions to the administrator’s office and “eliminating” the stand-alone OEJECR.
It also calls for eliminating the Office of Enforcement & Compliance Assurance (OECA) and “returning” the office’s function to specific media offices because OECA “has created a mismatch between standard-setting and implementation.” This would use “enforcement to ensure compliance, not to achieve extra-statutory objectives.”
Further, the document calls for reforms to EPA’s EJ and Title VI authority, noting the Biden administration “is broadening EPA’s use and interpretation of [EJ and Title VI] beyond long-standing understanding of the legal limits of that authority. As a threshold matter, there is an opportunity to redefine EJ as a tool for the agency to prioritize environmental protection efforts and assistance to communities in proximity to pollution or with the greatest need for additional protection. Allocations of agency resources, increased EPA enforcement, and/or agency distribution of grants should be based on neutral constitutional principles.”
Finally, the document says EPA should “pause and review all ongoing EJ and Title VI actions to ensure they are consistent with” the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision, Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, that held race-based considerations for college admissions are unconstitutional.
Matthew Tejada, who ran EPA’s EJ program for over a decade and is now at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), has also heard the Clinton EO is in danger of repeal but says, “Who knows what is just frantic echo chamber noise and what is actually coming from inside his operation? But it wouldn’t surprise me.”
As far as the future of OEJECR, Tejada says because it is not a statutorily defined program office, “there is real jeopardy there for it to be sent back to the place it was before, and that place could be where we were in 2018, or 2014, or 1991, before there was an OEJ. All of those befores are on the table.”
However, he also notes a difference between President-elect Donald Trump making sweeping statements claiming a broad mandate, and a political appointee coming into EPA and executing a widespread EJ purge, because “our government is complex” to run.
‘Really Vulnerable’
But Tejada believes the EJ, civil rights, children’s health programs as well as OECA are “really vulnerable” under a second Trump term.
He notes it is OECA “always getting the first, hardest blow” even though “over and over it has been shown that the American people really don’t like it when their government isn’t allowed to serve them. And what they are contemplating is going in and making the job of government and its ability to serve hard to impossible for years to come.”
Other Biden EJ actions thought to be on the chopping block include the Justice40 initiative seeking to direct at least 40 percent of the benefits of federal infrastructure investments to EJ areas, EPA’s elevation of EJ as an enforcement priority, a requirement for many agencies to create EJ offices and issue EJ strategic plans that are graded under an EJ scorecard, the creation of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and the revival of the White House Interagency Council on EJ, among others.
Chitra Kumar, a former OEJECR official who is now with the Union of Concerned Scientists, says there is a lot of concern and anxiety about “EPA really becoming a shell of its former self.” She notes one of the first bullet points of the Project 2025’s EPA chapter is to return EJ functions to the administrator’s office
Kumar adds that if Trump goes so far as to revoke the Clinton EO that would mean there is “no requirement for federal agencies to continue to do EJ work.”
Under Biden, many federal agencies including DOJ created their own EJ offices and issued EJ strategic plans, all of which are in danger of revocation. The White House Council on Environmental Quality and EPA took the lead on shepherding these efforts, and “every one of them has a big target on their back,” she says.
Evergreen Action policy expert Charles Harper agrees that these programs are a target, noting “everything President Trump has said is anathema to [Biden’s efforts to elevate EJ] and there is a real fear he might target EJ offices and grant programs if they’re not fully spent down by the end of the Biden administration. We’re really concerned about that and that he will prioritize fossil fuel development in communities that have borne the brunt” of industrial pollution over decades.
He adds that it is difficult to develop a pushback strategy without any Democratic control in Congress.
And Julius Redd, an EJ-focused attorney at Beveridge & Diamond, says he anticipates “a retrenchment” from the Biden EJ focus under Trump as well as a major reorganization of EJ within EPA.
However, the expected ambush on EJ does not mean the Trump EPA will drop all efforts to address equity, with the industry attorney saying, “I do think there will be a persistent focus on EJ, just in a different way” and without using the term. Instead, the focus is likely to be on “effective engagement” with communities beyond those that are overburdened by pollution and “open[ing] the umbrella quite a way beyond EO 12898” to include rural communities that do not have access to broadband, communities that have “food deserts” and other non-traditional EJ areas.
IRA Funding
These sources have mixed views about whether the Trump administration will continue to honor the $3 billion in “obligated” EJ-targeted funds under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
Redd expects the incoming administration to “view funding that has not already been distributed to recipients” as eligible for evaluation under different metrics.
Kumar expects an effort to reclaim funding not spent under the IRA.
But the industry attorney notes that many of the grants are for projects in red states which will likely want to keep them.
Tejada agrees, asking why Trump would “want to take back millions from places that are very conservative [and are] paying for things that everybody wants?”
However, he notes the difference between funds that were “obligated” but not yet spent, versus funds already drawn down. Funds that are obligated but not yet drawn down could potentially be pulled back because contracts are worded to allow the new administration wiggle room to change priorities.
He does not know where the new administration is going to land on the funding issue, questioning whether it will use a “buzzsaw or a scalpel” to decide.
Tejada notes that incoming Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Chair Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV) suggested in a Nov. 20 Politico interview that “obligated” funds are off limits, saying Republicans won’t be able to “claw back” grants EPA distributed under the IRA including the EJ money and $27 billion for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
“Money that’s already been obligated and out the door, that’s a decision that’s final,” Capito said. “But . . . we're gonna shut the door on these frivolous ways to waste money in that bill.”
Nonetheless Tejada says grantees are facing a lot of anxiety and may be afraid to spend obligated money they received. “There are folks who are wondering just what they got themselves into. My message has been . . . everyone has to make their own choices but none of this [scrutiny] should be a surprise.” And that as long as grantees are playing by the rules “they should not fear the scrutiny.”
He adds as a caution that the Trump administration will have to confront the reality of any decision to dissolve EPA program offices responsible for oversight of the obligated grants.
Tejada authored a Nov. 20 blog post that warns Project 2025 is especially dangerous for EJ, “largely due to the historic strides made by the Biden administration.”
He tells Inside EPA that he is conflicted about leaving the agency last year. “There’s a part of me that feels reassured I am not there, and a huge part that feels guilty I am not there to support the staff and stand with them and the programs they run.”
But he remains hopeful Trump will not wipe out all of the progress, for which “there is an argument to be made that the amount and scale and speed outstripped” that of 1960s movements. “It will be some time yet before we can really assess to what extent did we raise the floor for our society, or did we just show what is possible for a future generation to achieve?”
‘Established Legacy’
Heather Tony, a former Obama-era Region 4 administrator who is now executive director of Beyond Petrochemicals, says it is important to note that “EJ has a very established legacy in this country . . . and that is not something that is easily wiped away with the stroke of a pen. . . . So despite saying that one may just attempt to erase EJ, we know the legacy of environmental justice, like the legacy of civil rights in this country, cannot just be erased by somebody’s whim or declaration.”
The first source agrees and notes that many Democratic-led states will likely elevate EJ in defiance of Trump’s national efforts. Communities will push back as well, so EJ “will still be a thing.”
Tony agrees and points to organizations like Earthjustice and NRDC as well as Louisiana groups “that have always prepared for an environment we knew would be contentious. . . . We cannot escape the fact there are communities suffering more from pollution than others.”
As an example, Jo Banner of Louisiana’s Descendants Project, which successfully opposed a massive grain elevator project, tells Inside EPA that her group intends to “make sure are community voices continue to be heard.”
She notes that Trump’s Health & Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may be an ally, particularly when it comes to plastics pollution.
“We’re going to keep moving forward. . . . We move onward because we have no choice. We don’t have the luxury of waiting.” -- Dawn Reeves (dreeves@iwpnews.com)
