Carlos Osorio/AP Photo
Donele Wilkins, founder of Green Door Initiative, stands in the field where her company is developing a solar community hub, June 28, 2022, in Detroit. Green Door Initiative received funding under the Biden administration’s Justice40 program.
The Trump administration’s sweeping reversals of Biden-era policies and the mass confusion caused by its vague orders to freeze swaths of obligated federal funds have throttled the federal response to climate change, upending the largest investments into tackling the problem in U.S. history.
The funding freeze and abrupt termination of an untold number of programs across the entire federal government has left many in the lurch, from small rural farmers and other business owners, to Christian aid groups, to Americans in low-income communities.
Chelsea Barnes, director of government affairs at Appalachian Voices, told me that local governments, community-based organizations, and business owners who rely heavily on grant funding are already having to lay people off and stop some services. Appalachian Voices is a nonprofit focused on environmental protection and community health.
One farmer in Cherryville, Maine, bought solar panels, a fruit sorter, and 14 freezers under a rural energy program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but is now unsure whether the Trump administration will reimburse him, according to a report on Thursday by a CBS affiliate in Orlando. One of the most prominent religious-based environmentalist organizations, Interfaith Power and Light, totally shuttered its national offices in January. And Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin announced last night that he is planning to “claw back $20 billion in grants that are already in the bank accounts of eight nonprofits” that have agreements to work on clean-energy projects for the government, E&E News reported today.
Among the casualties is a little-known Biden program called Justice40, which advocates have described as a historically ambitious federal initiative that established the first “whole-of-government” effort aimed at environmental justice.
Justice40 directed all federal agencies to prioritize poor, underserved communities that are overburdened by pollution or potential climate change impacts when investing federal money into energy efficiency, water and waste infrastructure, sustainable housing, and more. The program provided guidelines for federal spending, rather than actual funds.
The Justice40 initiative was focused entirely on low-income and underresourced communities, explicitly excluding any consideration of race.
The overarching goal was to deliver 40 percent of the benefits of federal investments—like those in the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—to the disadvantaged and low-income communities that need them the most. Unlike other federal initiatives, some of the central grant programs that fell under the Justice40 umbrella directed funds specifically to grassroots organizations that have a real track record and relationships within a particular community, in addition to a record of successful, on-the-ground work over the years.
The initiative was behind a $30 million grant to Savannah, Georgia, to repair a canal and improve storm water systems in neighborhoods that had been experiencing repeated flooding for years, for example. A recently announced $20 million EPA grant funded partnerships between universities, local governments, and nonprofits in Virginia to upgrade child care facilities, water, and telecommunications infrastructure, as well as funding career development in the energy sector. And Justice40 was behind a Department of Housing and Urban Development program that has provided more than $1 billion for renovations in senior housing and low-income communities, like the Pleasant Valley Apartments in Dickinson, North Dakota, which received more than $3 million last year for things like energy-efficient windows and better insulation to deal with the state’s dangerously cold winters.
President Donald Trump eliminated the Justice40 program on day one of his second term, lumping it alongside programs to address racial inequity that have been targeted in the White House’s campaign against “DEI.” This was despite the fact that the initiative was focused entirely on low-income and underresourced communities, explicitly excluding any consideration of race, and was designed that way to insulate it from the alleged reverse-discrimination arguments that undergird much of Trump’s policy.
Indeed, the decision against considering racial demographics was a point of contention for advocates and a major critique of Justice40, given that decades of research shows that race is in fact the strongest, most consistent predictor of environmental burdens in the U.S. The New York Times’ report on the Biden strategy was even titled “White House Takes Aim at Environmental Racism, but Won’t Mention Race,” which essentially describes the approach endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court for addressing discrimination and structural inequities.
Moreover, research has shown that the majority of IRA funding is actually going to Republican-led states and GOP districts designated as “disadvantaged,” as opposed to majority-minority communities, Inside Climate News reported last month.
In short, the initiative excluded race, and was instead carefully calibrated to comply with the “color-blind” principles underlying the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that outlawed affirmative action. But the Trump administration eliminated it on that very basis nonetheless (and despite the fact that the Court’s ruling is ostensibly limited to college admissions).
Holly Burke, communications director with Evergreen Action, said that the messaging around so-called DEI reveals a level of ignorance about what Biden-era initiatives actually do. The climate action group lobbied the Biden administration to adopt Justice40 and pushed unsuccessfully for considering racial demographics. Both Burke and Barnes of Appalachian Voices stressed that racial justice is at the root of the environmental justice movement, while noting that the overall concerns are broader, and that Justice40 itself was simply unconcerned with race in terms of identifying “disadvantaged” neighborhoods.
“The idea was always that the money should go where it’s needed the most, and a lot of communities that will be hurt are rural, white communities that had also qualified for funding under the Justice40 parameters,” Burke said. “It’s clear to me that Trump doesn’t understand that these programs also benefit a lot of people he considers his base.”
Barnes pointed out that lots of groups and organizations in central and southern Appalachia have received environmental justice grants. “People hear that phrase and it comes with certain connotations, but we use that here in coal country to help folks who are low-income and have been dealing with degrading infrastructure and pollution for a long time,” she said. “What could be wrong with that?”
THE GUIDELINES ESTABLISHED UNDER JUSTICE40 sought to direct more than $115 billion in federal funding for infrastructure, clean energy, and climate resiliency primarily to the poorest and most neglected American communities.
Notably, the federal government’s efforts to address climate change and associated risks involve much more than purchasing and installing solar panels. They include electrifying and installing wastewater treatment in multifamily homes; installing or upgrading HVAC systems, electric heat pumps, and home insulation; upgrading aging flood protection and drainage systems; planting tree canopies and building cooling centers; and even establishing Job Corps and other employment training programs for young people who want to work in sustainable energy.
A report released last month by the EPA estimated that “over 60% of the funding obligated by the Agency through the end of” 2024 did in fact benefit “disadvantaged communities,” as defined by the Biden administration.
That definition looked at census tracts and considered criteria including income; health issues; legacy pollution hazards; exposure to fire, flood, and other environmental risks; energy costs; and whether a jurisdiction lacks green space, or is near abandoned mines, or lacks indoor plumbing, among other considerations.
The formulation was developed by Biden’s White House Council on Environmental Quality, which created the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, or CEJST, to help governments and advocates identify the communities with the greatest need. The tool does not consider race as a factor.
CEJST ultimately captured more majority-white tracts, as the White House calibrated and refined the criteria in response to public comments.
Later versions of the screening tool “appear[ed] biased toward less diverse tracks,” and “appear to prioritize whiter communities,” Grist reported in February 2023. Bob Dean, CEO of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a Chicago-based nonprofit that assessed the tool, told Grist that the changes the White House made “ended up making the program less focused on people of color than it originally was.”
Yet the Trump administration has revoked the executive order that established Justice40, and has separately directed federal agencies to terminate “all DEI, DEIA and ‘environmental justice’ offices,” positions, and programs.
The EPA itself also made a vague reference to diversity and inclusion, without any further explanation, when I asked why the administration scrapped federal grants that would improve living conditions for low-income Americans and for many Trump voters.
“EPA is working to diligently implement President Trump’s executive orders, including the ‘Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,’ as well as subsequent associated implementation memos,” the agency press office said. “President Trump was elected with a mandate from the American people to do just this.”
“I think it’s hard not to interpret all the messaging around DEI as an incredibly thinly veiled and straightforwardly racist approach to governance,” Burke said. But poor white folks and many Republican voters will get caught up in that approach.
For now, the Justice40 program is dead, and will likely only be revived by a future Democratic president.
