Across the country, people are made to breathe noxious fumes and drink strange-tasting water that is making them sick. Perhaps it’s the nearby factory spewing pollution into the air, meatpacking plants dumping waste into rivers, or a cluster of oil refineries nearby. Many communities deal with multiple sources of pollution at once and outsized harm from climate disasters, too.

These problems are not distributed equally. Long legacies of discrimination and prejudice have corralled environmental burdens into Black, Brown, Indigenous, immigrant, rural, and low-income communities, bringing devastating illnesses as well. 

The Biden administration, while it didn’t do nearly enough to redress those harms, took some historic first steps. But Trump is ruthlessly dismantling every bit of progress possible with cruel, targeted attacks on these environmental justice communities. Make no mistake — Trump’s rollbacks will cost lives. 

Environmental Justice Communities Bear the Brunt of Polluting Industries

Dirty industries wreak havoc on our health across the country, and environmental justice communities bear the brunt by far. Folks in the Gulf Coast, for example, sit in the belly of the beast of the fossil fuel industry. Across Texas and Louisiana, this region has been inundated with polluting infrastructure.

In the town of Port Arthur, TX, residents have been forced to the frontlines of toxic pollution. Nearby sits the largest oil refinery in North America, along with two others. The liquefied natural gas and plastic industries are now also booming in the region.

These industries spew millions of pounds of pollutants into air and lungs, including toxic particulates and carcinogens like benzene and ethylene oxide. Port Arthur residents face a cancer risk 190 times higher than what the Environmental Protection Agency deems “acceptable.”

Gulf Coast communities take a double hit — first from the industry’s toxic air pollution and then from hurricanes and storms fueled by fossil fuel-driven climate change. Hurricane Harvey damaged or destroyed more than 80% of homes in Port Arthur and its neighbor, Beaumont.

These attacks on residents’ health and well-being are another chapter in the long story of racism and classism in this country.

Nationwide, kids in communities of color have asthma at seven times the rate of kids in mostly white communities, by one analysis. Environmental justice communities are less likely to have clean, running water or functioning sewage systems.

They’re also at higher risk during all sorts of climate disasters. For example, one study found that from 2004 to 2018, Indigenous people saw the highest rate of heat-related deaths, followed by Black people. 

Environmental justice programs and policies were designed to bring relief and resources to these communities. But Trump’s actions will make matters worse for them. More people will get sick and die. 

Trump’s Multi-Pronged Attack on Environmental Justice

For decades, environmental justice organizations have fought for the health and environment of their communities. The Biden administration finally started taking heed. 

The Justice 40 initiative, for example, put down a marker. It committed to ensuring that 40% of the benefit from federal investment in housing and clean energy go to environmental justice communities that have been historically overburdened with pollution.  

Policies like this were passed to reverse discrimination and injustices. But now, environmental justice has come under fire from the Trump administration, as part of its overall attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion. His claims that environmental justice policies are “discriminatory” are insulting. 

Providing federal support to these communities is essential to making amends. It’s a key part of achieving a world in which everyone — no matter their background, ethnicity, or class — has access to clean air, clean water, sustainable food, and a livable future.

Rather than create a brighter future, Trump is dragging us back into a dark past. His attacks on diversity, equity, inclusion, and environmental justice are shredding support and protections from many angles. In just a few months, Trump has kneecapped decades of progress by:

1. Attacking the very foundations of federal action on environmental justice. 

In January, Trump struck down an executive order that, for more than 30 years, required agencies to consider how their decisions would affect the health and environment of people of color and low-income communities. This executive order formed the basis for many agency rules written to protect these communities. Now, those rules are more vulnerable to being struck down.

2. Letting polluters that are harming environmental justice communities off the hook.

The Trump administration has shamelessly used its opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion as cover for letting polluters off the hook. For example, it terminated a Biden-era lawsuit against a plastic plant in Louisiana that connected the plant’s pollution with the elevated cancer risk of nearby majority-Black residents. By dropping the lawsuit, the Trump administration claimed it was fulfilling its aims of dismantling “radical DEI programs.”

3. Firing and reassigning federal workers dedicated to reducing pollution and delivering justice.

In January, the Trump administration issued a memo directing agencies to cut jobs dedicated to environmental justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion. A month later, Trump eliminated the Office of Environmental Justice at the Department of Justice, which supported communities in fighting polluters in court.

In March, he completely shuttered the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) environmental justice arm and shut down 10 regional offices, impacting low-income rural communities. The staff in these regional offices worked on the ground with local groups and communities to address pollution. 

Soon after, Trump’s EPA announced it would take more than 350 additional workers off the job of tackling pollution in environmental justice communities. 

4. Rolling back policies that made environmental justice a major priority. 

Early on in his presidency, Trump rescinded a suite of Biden’s executive orders that created an unprecedented focus on environmental justice. Among the programs cut was the aforementioned Justice40 initiative.  

5. Cancelling funding for every single one of the EPA’s environmental justice grants. 

These nearly 800 grants promised funding for projects to monitor, prevent, and clean up pollution in environmental justice communities, among other goals. In June, a group of nonprofits, Tribes, and local governments sued the Trump administration for canceling $3 billion in funding for 350 Environmental and Climate Justice Grant programs.

In particular, Trump has stopped projects that would have

• Monitored air pollution in communities from oil refineries, heavy industry, fracking operations, and highways;
• Built resilience hubs that would have provided food, educational opportunities, healthcare, electricity, laundry facilities, and shelter to low-income communities during climate disasters;
• Installed wastewater systems in majority-Black Alabama communities where folks can’t afford them and must pipe raw sewage onto their lawns;
• Planted trees to help clean the air and provide shade through increasingly hot summers (in cities nationwide, communities of color have fewer trees and endure hotter temperatures in heatwaves);
• Built infrastructure to deliver clean, safe water to rural Latino communities in California that have long-relied on wells and small systems delivering pesticide-contaminated water;
• Provided electric transit and home air quality upgrades to a predominantly Latino community in San Diego plagued with traffic pollution from nearby highways and industry;
• Prevented flooding and erosion due to melting permafrost that threatens critical infrastructure for the Native Village of Kipnuk;

and much, much more.

Trump Is Attacking Communities’ Agency

Crucially, many environmental justice policies were designed not only to benefit communities but also to bring them to the table. For decades, our government and corporations have made development decisions while bulldozing over the needs and wishes of residents — from highways that slashed through majority-Black neighborhoods, to factory farms built right beside rural communities.

Taking the lead from grassroots groups and residents is therefore an essential part of environmental justice. Local communities know what’s best for them and should have a say in decisions about their communities and their land. 

Notably, this is a key tenet of our bedrock environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA requires the government to take community input on major projects and has allowed residents to stop polluting projects in their communities. 

But Trump is taking an axe to this law for the sake of fast-tracking corporate development and fossil fuel drilling. He has also explicitly directed agencies to stop environmental justice analyses when reviewing new projects under NEPA.

Trump isn’t content with taking away people’s health — he’s going after their agency and local democracy, too.

Oppose Trump’s Cruel Cuts to Environmental Justice!

Trump’s rampage against environmental justice programs will have terrible consequences across the country. Worse, when combined with his other policies, these environmental justice cuts become even crueler.

His Big, Ugly bill will kick millions off Medicaid, make healthcare more expensive, and shut down rural hospitals. At the same time, people will continue getting sick, as the government lets corporate polluters have their way with our air and water.

As with all of his agenda, Trump’s intentions are clear: make life worse for the rest of us, especially our most vulnerable neighbors, while clearing the way for more corporate profits. It’s more important than ever for us to stand with environmental justice groups and communities.

We need to fight these Trump policies that put lives and futures at risk. And we need to stop the industries that have harmed these communities for too long.

John Beard, Jr. is the Founder and CEO of Port Arthur Community Action Network. After working in the oil industry for 38 years, Beard turned to holding the industry accountable and became a community advocate in his hometown of Port Arthur, TX.

He founded the Port Arthur Community Action Network to fight for health and safety protections in an area teeming with refineries, export terminals, petrochemical plants… and cancer.