Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it began implementing Trump’s executive order “Ending Radial and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” [emphasis, links added]
The agency placed 171 employees in DEI and environmental justice offices on leave.
The EPA intends to close the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, The Washington Post reported. Trump appointees at the Justice Department announced they would restructure the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.
Shortly after her confirmation, Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded any “memoranda, guidance, or similar directive that implement the prior administration’s ‘environmental justice’ agenda.”
“Going forward, the [DOJ] will evenhandedly enforce all federal civil and criminal laws, including environmental laws,” Bondi noted.
Why does this matter?
“Environmental justice” refers to the toxic brew of critical race theory and climate alarmism.
According to critical race theory, America is institutionally racist against black people and other minorities and in favor of white people. According to climate alarmism, the burning of fossil fuels will bring about Armageddon.
The EPA defines “environmental justice” as ensuring that Americans “are fully protected from disproportionate and adverse human health and environmental effects (including risks) and hazards, including those related to climate change, the cumulative impacts of environmental and other burdens, and the legacy of racism or other structural or systemic barriers” (italics added).
Trump entered office promising to unleash American energy and reverse the Biden administration’s promotion of critical race theory and its application in the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” movement.
This diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement aims to promote some racial minorities, rejecting the colorblind approach of focusing on merit or competence.
While President George H.W. Bush established the EPA’s Office of Environmental Equity—the office that President Bill Clinton would later rename the Office of Environmental Justice—President Joe Biden hypercharged its mission, directing all government efforts on DEI, restrictions on fossil fuels, and promotion of less reliable forms of energy, like wind and solar.
In doing so, Biden followed the demands of activist groups, many of which staffed and advised his administration.
As I note in my book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” Biden tapped climate alarmists for key leadership positions:
- Biden picked Michael Regan, a vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, to head up the EPA.
- Biden selected Laura Daniel-Davis, a vice president at the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), to serve at the Department of the Interior.
- He nominated Tracey Stone-Manning, another NWF staffer who confessed to typing out a letter on behalf of tree-spiking eco-terrorists, to head the Bureau of Land Management.
- Gina McCarthy, who headed EPA under President Obama, became president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) until Biden appointed her national climate adviser.
When Trump moved against the EPA’s environmental justice office, NRDC released a statement condemning the move as a “disgrace.” Who did NRDC enlist to make the statement? None other than Matthew Tejada, who directed the Office of Environmental Justice from 2013 to 2022.
“The Trump EPA is abandoning the communities across our nation that need help the most,” Tejada said. “Shuttering the environmental justice office will mean more toxic contaminants, dangerous air, and unsafe water in communities across the nation that have been most harmed by pollution in the past.”
That conclusion, of course, relies on the assumptions of critical race theory and climate alarmism.
If America is not institutionally racist but rather a country with civil rights laws that protect citizens of all races from discrimination, the EPA does not need an “environmental justice” office to combat pollution for Americans of specific skin colors.
If the predictions of climate disasters are overblown and based on false assumptions that exaggerate the risks when actual deaths from climate disasters have declined by 99% over the past century, then perhaps the EPA need not invest extra funds in an office of environmental justice.
If fossil fuels have gotten substantially cleaner, perhaps the EPA should focus on specific air quality issues, rather than premonitions of global climate doom.
This seems to be at least part of the reasoning behind EPA’s restructuring.
“Under President Trump, the EPA will be focused on our core mission to protect human health and the environment, while Powering the Great American Comeback,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement Tuesday. “The previous Administration used DEI and Environmental Justice to advance ideological priorities, distributing billions of dollars to organizations in the name of climate equity. This ends now.”
“We will be good stewards of tax dollars and do everything in our power to deliver clean air, land, and water to every American, regardless of race, religion, background, and creed,” he added.
While pollution affects Americans in different ways, the EPA need not indulge in critical race theory and climate alarmism to effectively combat the real threats Americans face.
Rather than addressing supposed institutional racism and fossil fuel-induced disaster, the EPA should focus on its actual mission: protecting Americans from concrete instances of pollution and environmental harm.
Of course, those humdrum concerns don’t require as much federal funding and staff — and that might explain the real reason behind the Left’s freakout over Trump’s move.
Read more at Daily Caller
All those idiots protesting are from that stupid Friends of the Earth and you can bet their sending out their typical junk mail asking for the usual suckers to donate to them then use the money to produce the typical Useful Idiots holding up their stupid signs