The environmental justice movement suffered a striking blow this year when the Trump administration rescinded $3 billion in grants to support EJ initiatives.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin terminated the grant programs and eliminated the EPA’s environmental justice office after the president tried to re-brand EJ as a “radical and wasteful” form of reverse discrimination and racial preferencing, lumped together with DEI.
The announcement hit Charles Lee particularly hard. Lee spent 26 years advancing EJ initiatives at the EPA, fighting to help communities who bear a disproportionate burden of pollution and climate risks. He put in his notice to retire, rather than stay through a second Trump administration.
Marianne—who wrote a poignant profile on Lee’s life and work—explains what’s happened to environmental justice programs since the rescissions, the real distinction between DEI and special preferences, and what comes next for the environmental justice movement.
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