For more than 30 years, the federal government has recognized that communities of color and low-income communities face a lopsided share of toxic pollution – leading to greater illness and reduced quality of life.

To start to address the issue, President Bill Clinton issued an executive order directing agencies to create policies that would reduce disproportionate environmental burdens based on race and class.

In a few short months, President Trump revoked Clinton’s executive order and all other environmental justice orders. And this week, the Trump administration decided to close the EPA’s regional environmental justice offices that were established to address pollution in disadvantaged communities around the country.

“The depth of erasure is so alarming,” said Maria Lopez-Nuñez, the co-founder of Agency, a nonprofit organization which builds community capacity for environmental justice fights. “They [the Trump administration] are not just saying we’re eliminating the programs. It’s: ‘We don’t give a damn about the environment at all or people’s lives or the health impacts across the country,’ ” she said.

Lopez-Nuñez is a nationally recognized environmental justice leader, who, until Trump’s arrival, was serving on the 36-member White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC) established by President Biden to offer advice and recommendations to his administration about the federal implementation of environmental justice policies.

President Joe Biden, surrounded by White House officials and leaders of the environmental justice movement, signs an executive order creating the White House Office of Environmental Justice, in the Rose Garden of the White House April 21, 2023 in Washington, DC. The order directed federal agencies to invest in communities that are disproportionately affected by pollution and climate change. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

Biden deepened the commitment to environmental justice beyond what any prior president had done by establishing the White House Office of Environmental Justice. The office took a “whole-of-government approach,” requiring that agencies throughout the federal government develop policies and procedures to eliminate current and historic environmental disparities.

The greater pollution burdens based on race are grounded in fact. People of color, for instance, are exposed to 38 percent higher levels of nitrogen dioxide, an air pollutant produced by cars and industry, than whites. NO2 is linked to asthma and heart disease and believed to cause thousands of deaths each year.

For years, Lopez-Nuñez, fought for justice for the Ironbound neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, where industrial polluters have treated the community as a dumping ground. Lopez-Nuñez engaged in numerous fights  – some with legal assistance from Earthjustice – including addressing the illegal burning of iodine by Covanta, an incinerator corporation.

Environmental activists hold signs in Newark’s Ironbound community on March 13, 2025, addressing the city’s recent approval of its fourth fossil fuel power plant. (Aristide Economopoulos for Earthjustice)

Her experiences on the ground in Newark informed her work at WHEJAC, where members gained a clearer understanding of environmental justice issues in cities, towns, and rural areas nationwide.

“It was incredible to hear the testimony from communities across the country,” Lopez-Nuñez said. “WHEJAC gave me a glimmer of hope that communities could stick together and make progress on rules that were promulgated by any administration.”

WHEJAC communicated directly to the White House through Dr. Jalonne White-Newsome, the first Federal Chief Environmental Officer, who coordinated environmental justice policies across federal agencies for the White House Office of Environmental Justice. Another initiative from the Biden administration was Justice40, an effort  intended to ensure that 40 percent of climate, clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing investments benefitted disadvantaged communities impacted by greater pollution burdens.

White-Newsome said the Justice40 initiative was one of the major projects that was “grounded in the recommendations that WHEJAC gave us.”

Although 40 percent of the benefits were aimed at overburdened communities, the administration surpassed that goal. “For fiscal year 2022-2023, we exceeded that goal and 71 percent of grants and loans and resources actually made it to disadvantaged communities because of the Justice40 Initiative,” said White-Newsome.

This federal funding amounted to more than $192 billion for projects related to sustainable housing, water infrastructure, climate and clean energy projects.

Martha Guzman, left, the former EPA Region 9 administrator, with Dr. Jalonne White-Newsome, the former White House Federal Chief Environmental Officer, at an event in San Francisco in 2024. (EPA)

“Over 500 programs within the federal government were re-envisioned and reimagined because of the Justice40 Initiative. It changed hew the federal government operated,” she added.

Earthjustice Vice President of Healthy Communities Patrice Simms called Justice40 “a concrete example of what happens when you have voices of people on the front lines informing and voicing their concerns.”

He blasted the scrapping of environmental justice policies by Trump. “Gutting environmental justice means the absence of that platform for communities to have a voice,” he said. “That [action] will have real consequences for families and communities around the country in terms of more avoidable deaths, more asthma attacks, more heart attacks, more strokes – all those things that we know to be the costs of disproportionate environmental burdens.”

No matter what the Trump administration does, the battle for environmental justice will continue.

Lopez-Nuñez said environmental justice leaders who were members of WHEJAC are discussing continuing to function as a body despite Trump’s attack.

After White-Newsome resigned from her role with the Biden administration, she returned to heading up her consulting firm Empowering a Green Environment and Economy. A lot of her focus, now, is helping clients, corporations, philanthropy, and NGOs to maintain commitments to environmental justice despite the Trump administrations’ attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout government.

“I think this is a time of crisis that forces us to be super creative,” she said. “My goal is to keep folks from backsliding and to see the value of environmental work – and to support our communities so they can continue to do the work.”