With its frigid, snowy winters, Buffalo, N.Y., can be a dangerous place to lose power in your home. So a group called PUSH Buffalo hatched a plan to build 150 hubs in under-resourced neighborhoods that would help communities weather blackouts and other emergencies, with assets such as backup generators, snow removal equipment, portable solar kits, and more. In December 2024, the federal government awarded PUSH Buffalo $20 million to fund the project.
The organization hired a full-time employee, entered discussions with subcontractors, and satisfactorily completed a pre-award certification review process. On May 2, without PUSH Buffalo ever receiving access to the funds, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) informed them that their grant had been terminated.
The project was part of the EPA’s $3 billion environmental and climate justice grant program, which was created by the Inflation Reduction Act to address longstanding pollution issues and invest in community resilience. While many of the grants target neighborhoods with severe pollution and outdated infrastructure, other initiatives benefit entire cities and regions far beyond the fencelines of these communities.
Earlier this year, Trump’s EPA unconstitutionally and arbitrarily eliminated the entire program, a move that Earthjustice and its litigation partners are challenging in court. Earthjustice’s lawsuit against the Trump administration argues that it violated constitutional safeguards and broke multiple laws by terminating the grant program, and we are fighting for its restoration.
Now Congress has doubled down on the attack by passing the notorious GOP budget bill, the legislative vehicle for Trump’s domestic agenda. The bill has made headlines for the bigger-ticket items (e.g., cutting Medicaid, gutting the clean energy industry, and still adding $3.3 trillion to the deficit due to tax breaks for wealthy Americans), but it also rescinds all unobligated funding from the environmental and climate justice grants program. This would take any funds that haven’t already been awarded off the table for future projects, even if the program is restored.
The grant program was designed to directly benefit disadvantaged communities that have long been overlooked by the federal government, focusing on 5 broad categories:
- Community-led pollution monitoring, prevention, and remediation;
- Climate and health risk mitigation (e.g., extreme heat and wildfires);
- Climate resilience and adaptation;
- Reduction of indoor air pollution and toxics such as lead paint;
- Improving communities’ engagement and access to public decision-making processes.
According to public government spending data, approximately 350 projects have been awarded, investing in rural and urban communities alike across the United States and Puerto Rico. Some examples include:
- 2CM, a non-profit in Jackson, Mississippi, was awarded $20 million to build a community resilience hub that would provide support and overnight shelter for 150 people during natural disasters and periods of extreme heat. This is one of 38 such projects. In many cases, the local governments and organizations leading these projects had spent years in collaborative planning processes and raised matching funds prior to receiving their awards.
- The Native Village of Kipnuk, Alaska, was awarded a $20 million grant to stabilize an eroding riverbank that poses an imminent hazard to the village’s critical infrastructure. In total, $260 million had been awarded to Native American and Alaska Native Tribes, investing in projects that span clean energy and grid resilience, housing upgrades, hazardous waste cleanup, workforce development, protecting sacred spaces, and beyond.
- Twenty of the projects address sewage or wastewater issues, from upgrading aging sewer lines in Guilford, North Carolina, to installing onsite wastewater treatment for 350 households in rural Alabama.
- Another 118 address indoor and outdoor air quality issues in polluted communities.
- Forty-seven projects involve planting trees to mitigate extreme heat and improve stormwater retention.
- Six projects expand lead poisoning prevention activities.
This map shows projects awarded funding through the EPA’s environmental and climate justice grant program, which the Trump administration has terminated. Click here to access the underlying data and see what projects were slated for your community.
The cancellation of the grant program is one piece of a broader and deeper attack on climate, environmental health, and communities.
In addition to terminating grants, EPA also moved to eliminate the Office of Environmental Justice, and has stripped key resources about environmental justice from its website. Likewise, the Departments of Energy, Transportation, Agriculture, and the Interior have all cancelled or paused programs with keywords related to equity and climate. And in parallel, mass layoffs across agencies have significantly impacted their ability to administer funding and communicate with grantees, even if the programs weren’t terminated.
Meanwhile, these actions are matched by efforts to supercharge fossil fuel development. Initial analysis by Jesse Jenkins et al. of Princeton University estimates the reconciliation bill will increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 190 million metric tons of CO2 per year, the equivalent of driving 44 million additional cars.
Without course correction, the outcome will be higher energy prices, extreme temperatures, strained electric grids, and increasingly intense natural disasters, all of which will disproportionately harm the most vulnerable communities. And now, Congress is clawing back investment to help those communities adapt, just as it was getting started.
In June, Earthjustice filed our first-ever class action lawsuit against the Trump administration. The lawsuit argues that what Trump’s EPA did is unconstitutional: It is Congress’ role to approve spending, and the White House is required to execute Congress’ wishes. It also failed to provide adequate justification for its decision and violated the Clean Air Act.
Meanwhile, our Policy and Legislation team will continue to educate members of the public and Congress about these critical projects and lay the groundwork to restore and strengthen the program when the opportunity arises.
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