Friend,

Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating Black freedom, is also an important day to highlight the continuing fight against the many forms of racial injustice that persist around the country. One of these is environmental racism — the reality that people of color face disproportionate harm from pollution, toxic waste, extreme weather driven by climate change, and other environmental hazards. To push back against the discriminatory practices and policies of business and government that drive environmental racism, Black activists launched the environmental justice movement in the 1980s.

Last Juneteenth we celebrated Justice40, the largest ever U.S. national commitment to environmental justice. Established by President Biden during his first week in office, Justice40 required that at least 40% of the benefits from federal investments in infrastructure and climate go to communities that have been historically underresourced and overburdened by pollution, including Black communities. As of last summer, the administration had achieved $600 billion in Justice40 investments across more than 500 federal programs within 19 federal agencies.

These investments funded grants to help communities clean up contaminated land, replace diesel school buses with cleaner models, build clean energy infrastructure, and much more. These projects helped reduce the health hazards created by pollution, reduce energy costs, and create good-paying clean energy jobs in these communities.

This Juneteenth, however, the situation is very different. 

On his very first day in office President Trump rescinded the Justice40 initiative, effectively freezing all funding for current and planned projects and leaving communities in limbo. This executive order was only the beginning of the Trump administration’s attacks on anything they say is related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Eliminating environmental justice initiatives has been a major prong of those attacks, including:

• Ordering the termination of “all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions”  across the federal government
   
• Dismantling the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights and the Department of Justice’s Office of Environmental Justice
   
• Rescinding the Council on Environmental Quality’s authority to implement the National Environmental Policy Act, removing enforcement of rules directing agencies to consider environmental impacts of their projects — and urging agencies to stop considering environmental justice impacts specifically
   
• Directing the Attorney General to identify and block all state and local laws addressing environmental justice and climate change

Among the administration’s latest attacks on environmental justice are those in the federal budget reconciliation bill that is currently before the Senate. The Trump administration has dubbed it their “Big Beautiful Bill,” while in reality it is a billionaire tax scam that will strip away protections against pollution, sell off public lands, and drive up energy costs, all to line the pockets of billionaires and Big Oil. Its environmental justice rollbacks include:

• Canceling environmental justice block grants funding projects in neighborhoods hardest hit by pollution
   
• Creating a “pay-to-play” scheme allowing corporations to pay a fee to fast-track projects and shortcut environmental review, leaving surrounding communities vulnerable to pollution — and blocking them from challenging projects in court
   
• Eliminating clean energy tax credits and incentives that help local governments, businesses, nonprofits, schools, and families transition to clean energy for cleaner air in their communities

We have a short window of opportunity to stop this bill. LCV and our partner organizations are showing up on the Hill every week to urge senators to protect our communities by rejecting this harmful bill. Join us!

If you have 5 minutes: Call your senators (here’s how!) or send them a message and tell them to vote NO on Republicans’ billionaire tax scam.

For more resources on our movement’s wins in recent years and the Trump administration’s attacks, check out our blog post. 

LCV Membership Team