Today it was confirmed that the Trump administration abolished the historic Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This office of about 200 civil servants coordinated environmental justice efforts across the agency, engaged with frontline impacted communities to address disparate environmental harms, and enforced federal civil rights laws – most notably Title VI, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin (including on the basis of limited-English proficiency); sex; disability; or age by applicants for and recipients of federal financial assistance from EPA. 

The Trump administration has also taken down EPA’s EJ Screen, a decade-old mapping tool of environmental burdens across the country, and it moved to break apart the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, shuttering its Office of Environmental Justice and freezing all pending environmental litigation. 

In response, Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter issued the following statement:

“We condemn the dismantling of federal environmental justice offices. Environmental justice is at the heart of addressing public health threats: from removing toxic lead water pipes in economically challenged areas, to stopping power plants in communities of color already overburdened by pollution, to factory farm gas plants in towns already blighted by superfund sites. This illegal attack on environmental justice and civil servants is a smokescreen for the broader Musk-Trump agenda: breaking the government, looting it and privatizing it. Congress must step in to defend public workers and stop this reckless dismantling of environmental protections.”