To what extent can the Trump Administration undermine State and Local Efforts?
By Emely Arredondo | US Environmental Policy Student
In the first 90 days of his second term, President Trump has made his intentions clear when it comes to environmental justice: eliminating any federal initiatives that tackled or were even remotely related to environmental justice or environmental causes. The infamous Executive Order “Unleashing American Energy”[1] put an immediate pause on the EJ cornerstones of the Inflation Reduction Act: Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change Grants Program, UPLIFT Grant Program, and Environmental Justice Government-to-Government Program.[2] This has also affected ambitious Justice40 initiative, implemented under Biden’s administration.[3] This program was intended to create a baseline 40% federal spending allocation to communities disproportionately affected by climate change (i.e. communities of color and low-income communities).
Across Executive agencies, EJ infrastructure has been debilitated, whether by the removal of online resources or personnel. Such infrastructure included the EPA’s comprehensive and timely EJScreen, which facilitated the mapping and surveillance of air and water quality, proximity to Superfund sites, and socioeconomic indicators.[4] The site for this tool has now been removed from the EPA’s website, as well as any other secondary sites with any mention of the word’s environmental justice.
Although these actions will have imminent impacts on regulatory compliance at the federal level, many states intend to continue their enforcement and passage of EJ policies at the state and local level. Beyond the policy landscape, environmental justice mutual aid work at the local level continues to thrive and innovate new ways to help minority communities across the United States.
In response to President Trump’s most recent Executive Order on limiting state environmental laws, New York and New Mexico governors have made their stance clear: “The federal government cannot unilaterally strip states’ independent constitutional authority.”[5] This statement was made by NY Governor Kathy Hochul and NM Governor Michelle Lujan Grishman, who happen to be the co-chairs of the U.S. Climate Alliance. The US Climate Alliance is a bi-partisan coalition that represents 24 governors (spanning 22 states and 2 territories) committed to advancing state-led, high-impact climate action[6]. This includes California, New York, and Vermont, the three states explicitly singled-out by Trump’s most recent EO. More specifically, these states are accused of threatening US energy independence and reliance with their lengthy environmental reviews.
New York and Vermont have recently passed climate laws that mimic the “polluter pays” model from Superfund laws to recover costs of egregious climate and public health impacts of Big Oil.[7] Such laws would begin to reconcile the many environmental justice inequities incurred by oil, gas, and coal companies in underrepresented and under-resourced communities. While it is uncertain how this new executive order aims to dismantle and deem these state laws unconstitutional, the Trump Admin is undermining the breadth of support climate policies have across the United States and the EO’s ability to impact state laws and litigation.
Michael Gerrad, faculty director at Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, underlines Trump “has no authority on his own to nullify laws.”[8] Indeed, it would up to state court judges to challenge climate lawsuits or conform to federal intervention. In many ways, this EO is as “toothless” as his attempt to reopen the Artic Refuge for oil leasing with no interest from the energy sector.
On the other hand, 2025 study “Americans’ support for climate justice” shows that more than half of Americans support climate justice, precisely 53%.[9] In the context of this study conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, the goals of climate justice are defined as reducing the unequal harms of climate change, producing equitable benefits from climate solutions, and including affected communities in the decision-making process. In other words, there is current public salience and support for environmental justice.
This is not Trump’s first administration. Climate advocates and environmental activists have seen Trump’s deregulatory playbook before, so while a new landscape, there is hope.
Whether environmental justice can remain framed as environmental work is uncertain. Nonetheless, one thing is certain: environmental justice work will continue, even under the repressive veil of Trump 2.0. Environmental justice mutual aid group Vessel Project of Louisiana —proximate to Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley”— and one-woman company Land & Liberation LLC are proof.
While environmental justice work is at constant odds with the current administration’s anti-environmental and climate skepticism, Vessel Project of Louisiana[10] and Land & Liberation LLC[11] are ready to fight against any imminent challenges with, respectively, mutual aid efforts to frontline communities in Louisiana and legal and educational services for minority farmers in the United States.
As the Trump administration has destabilized food aid programs, cut funding, and overwhelmingly disrupted and hurt the U.S. food system, Dãnia Davy is using her policy and risk mitigation skills, as a lawyer and Senior Policy Advisor at Oxfam, to support farmers. She does so in the most creative of ways—she hosts a weekly “WTF?!Office Hours”, a free webinar where she provides education resources to help farmers handle the quickly evolving policy landscape under Trump.[12] Her educational programming and pro-bono legal services aim to primarily support Black, Brown, and Indigenous farmers—which are at the forefront of Trump’s executive orders aiming to diminish climate change, DEI, and agricultural programs.
Vessel Project of Louisiana, founded in 2021 by environmentalist Roishetta Ozana, empowers community resilience and environmental justice work by meeting the emergency needs of vulnerable communities in the region. The organization’s grassroot efforts include hosting monthly community meetings, attending monthly city council, police jury, and school board meetings, and many more community-engaged partnerships.[13] Beyond community engagement, their programming includes a tri-fold focus on economic development, community outreach, and education alongside ensuring that corresponding communities maintain their dignity and are equipped to advocate for themselves. In 2024, their prolonged community efforts resulted in the rejection of proposed Mossville Borrow Pit, a 70-acre excavation site of earthen materials for another site; the EPA’s designation of three petrochemicals as High Priority Substances; and bill, emergency, and disaster assistance for thousands of community members in Louisiana.[14]
As highlighted by Roishetta Ozane, “We’ve [BIPOC and low-income communities] always found a way to survive and thrive in our communities and the government is not going to save us. We are going to save ourselves.”[15]
While the chances of a propitious time frame for environmental justice policies are seemingly slim at the federal level, scholars like Dr. Robert Bullard recognize that environmental justice movements have historically leveraged inopportune political environments by subverting established power asymmetries and imagining alternative socio-economic models for a more sustainable and equitable future.[16] The environmental justice community will continue to persevere against the tenuous and uncertain political backdrop of the Trump administration. Ozane and Davy are just two examples of the countless community efforts actively and ready to act against the slew of actions threatening environmental justice work at the moment.
[1] “Unleashing American Energy”. The White House. January 20, 2025.
[2] “Environmental Justice Revisited”. BCLP. March 12, 2025. https://www.bclplaw.com/en-US/events-insights-news/environmental-justice-revisited.html.
[3] “Justice40”. https://www.thejustice40.com/.
[4] “Environmental Justice Revisited”. BCLP.
[5] Adam Aton. “Trump declared war on state climate laws.” E&E News by Politico. April 9, 2025. https://www.eenews.net/articles/trump-declares-war-on-state-climate-laws/.
[6]“States United for Climate Action”. United States Climate Alliance. https://usclimatealliance.org/.
[7] Adam Aton. “Trump declared war on state climate laws.” E&E News by Politico.
[8] Ibid.
[9] “American’s support for climate justice”. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. January 23, 2025. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/climate-justice-article/#:~:text=We%20find%20that%20only%20about,than%20oppose%20it%20(19%25).
[10] “Home”. Vessel Project of Louisiana. https://www.vesselprojectoflouisiana.org/.
[11] “Home”. Land & Liberation LLC. https://land-liberation.com/.
[12] Grace Hussain. “How One Lawyer’s Helping Farmers Navigate Trump’s Policy Landscape”. April 4, 2025. https://sentientmedia.org/helping-farmers-navigate-trumps-policy/.
[13] “Year in Review”. Vessel Project of Louisiana. https://www.vesselprojectoflouisiana.org/.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Safura Syed. “Environmental justice leaders across Louisiana steel themselves for a second Trump term”. Louisiana Illuminator. November 19, 2024. https://lailluminator.com/2024/11/19/environment-louisiana-trump/.
[16]Aissa Dearing. “Survival Strategies: The Next Chapter of Environmental Justice”. JSTOR Daily. March 20, 2025. https://daily.jstor.org/survival-strategies-the-next-chapter-of-environmental-justice/.