For a quarter of a century, a Black neighborhood in Beaumont, Texas, where Chris Jones lives has been the subject of two federal civil rights investigations by the Environmental Protection Agency that explore the role of race in his community’s disproportionately high levels of air pollution. 

In San Francisco, Kamillah Ealom’s neighborhood has been the site of an environmental  cleanup for decades, with the government regularly imposing fines on the worst polluters. 

And in the Midwest’s steel city, Gary, Indiana, Donna Jack and her neighbors have worked with the EPA to put polluters like Gary Works, the nation’s largest steel mill, under court-supervised cleanup agreements that threaten businesses with closure if they don’t change their ways. 

During the presidency of Joe Biden, efforts to address environmental harms in communities of color underwent a significant expansion, offering neighborhoods that advocates said had been long-neglected a semblance of hope — and additional federal dollars  — to combat pollution.

But with President Donald Trump’s return to office, the future of a national campaign to focus on reducing pollution in Black communities is seriously at risk before its positive impacts could fully take hold. Through the first 60 days of his second term, Trump has dismantled anti-pollution programs, shut down regulatory offices, and begun sweeping rollbacks of environmental protections.

Now, environmentalists say, Black neighborhoods are being left vulnerable to the detrimental effects of industrial emissions, soil contamination, water pollution, and other hazards, while the president promotes an agenda that critics say prioritizes deregulation over public health.

In a little less than two months, advocates say, Trump’s actions already threaten to undo much of the work of the EPA during its 55 years of existence.

“EPA is losing the E and the P from its name,” said Marvin Brown, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, one of the nation’s largest environmental law organizations. “It seems like the agency is really giving up on protecting the environment and human health. People will die from the unnecessary amounts of pollution.”

For one activist, Debra Ramirez of Lake Charles, Louisiana, the decimation of the EPA and its regulations comes as no surprise. In the 1990s, her community faced a cluster of cancer cases connected to contamination from a neighboring chemical plant. 

“As far as people of color, Black people, we have been through it all our lives, so it’s nothing new to us,” she said. “Now everyone else will feel it, too.”

America’s new environmental agenda

The Trump administration is rolling back more than 30 major environmental protections. In a statement, Lee Zeldin, the new EPA director, said officials plan to “unwind” protections against air and water pollution, including limits on emissions from power plants, industrial facilities, and cars. According to EPA analyses, these rules prevented tens of thousands of premature deaths annually and saved Americans and the nation’s health care system billions of dollars by limiting hospital and doctor visits. 

In addition, the Trump administration has also shut down all environmental justice offices within the EPA, wiping out programs that have existed for decades. Many of those programs were created under Republican President George H.W. Bush to address high pollution levels. Under Biden, those programs had been expanded, with more funding and staff to directly support communities suffering from environmental hazards. The efforts promoted by Biden administration officials helped coordinate federal grants, partnerships, and regulatory actions aimed at reducing pollution in neighborhoods where Black residents have been breathing dirty air for generations.

But now, all of that is gone.

Statistically, Black people are more likely to be exposed to excess air pollution in America. (Adam Mahoney/Capital B)

Zeldin, appointed by Trump, justified the cuts under an executive order titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” The administration has deliberately lumped environmental justice initiatives into its broader attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, framing the move as a way to reduce federal oversight.

“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion,” Zeldin said during his announcement of actions that closely mirror Project 2025. 

During the election cycle last year, critics of federal environmental regulations spent $445 million on lobbying Trump and Congress, including $96 million directly to the Trump campaign. Many deregulation advocates, including the American Petroleum Institute, directly called on Trump to repeal these initiatives and rules.

“These actions by Zeldin and Trump to demolish EPA protections, to quote Zeldin, will drive a ‘dagger straight into the heart’ of our health, drive up medical, energy, and disaster costs, and destroy our future,” said Leslie Fields, the chief federal officer for WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a Black-led national organization based in Harlem.

The Trump administration is working to weaken the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. The program tracks emissions from major industrial polluters across the U.S. It provides critical data on pollution that drives rising seas, intensifies droughts, and fuels wildfires — and scientists say the efforts threatens both ecosystems and human lives. The move is akin to “unplugging the equipment that monitors the vital signs of a patient that is critically ill,” experts told ProPublica.

Read More on the EPA Moves That Got Us Here:

The Trump administration also plans to eliminate the EPA’s scientific research arm, and have proposed firing up to 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists, and other scientists. This move would dramatically shrink the EPA workforce and eliminate the Office of Research and Development, which provides scientific backing for policies aimed at clean water, air quality monitoring, and toxic site cleanup. Environmental activists warn that those cuts could severely compromise the EPA’s ability to safeguard public health and fulfill its core mission.

Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, who was an EPA adviser during the first Trump administration, called the move “a wrecking ball assault” on science. 

Zeldin, advocates say, has made it clear that the EPA’s new mission is to lower costs for businesses and consumers. The administrator said, “These actions will create American jobs” and “lower [the] cost of living for Americans.” Public health researchers warn that these changes will lead to higher pollution levels, worsening respiratory and cardiovascular diseases in places that were already struggling.

“In nearly every American county, more Black people die from air pollution,” said Fields, of WE ACT. “Enabling this disparity is environmental racism, and these rollbacks will lead to continued increasing rates of cancer, lung and heart disease, illnesses, and premature death in our communities.”

Funding for grants to help local groups monitor air quality, clean up toxic sites, and fight industrial pollution, have also been cut. Without those programs, communities already hit hardest by environmental hazards are losing a critical lifeline, advocates say.

Read More: Will ‘Biden’s Billions’ Deliver True Environmental Justice?

“The EPA is supposed to take care of any and every American. I don’t care if there’s only one house facing the impacts, they’re supposed to take care of that family with everything they have to make it good for them with concerns to air contamination, water contamination, and soil contamination,” Ramirez said. “Now it is like we as a people have to put up with this corporate businessman behavior without any pathways.”

Read More: EPA Rollbacks Could Put Black Lives at Risk

Adam Mahoney is the climate and environment reporter at Capital B. He can be reached by email at adam.mahoney@capitalbnews.org, on Bluesky, and on X at @AdamLMahoney.