Politics

Trump Admin To Cut EPA Environmental Justice Offices Expanded Under Biden

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reportedly planning to cut all environmental justice offices, according to a memo from agency administrator Lee Zeldin.

In the internal memo, reviewed by The New York Times, Zeldin wrote that he was directing “the reorganization and elimination” of environmental justice offices in all 10 regional EPA branches, in addition to the office in Washington D.C. First established under former President George H.W. Bush, the environmental justice offices have been criticized for the “unchecked waste of taxpayer funds,” and grants that were funneled to far-left organizations.

The offices’ mission was to “protect overburdened and underserved communities from the harm caused by environmental crimes, pollution, and climate change,” according to its website that has since been scrubbed from the internet.

In a March 2 letter, the EPA referred the “financial mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and oversight failures with the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF),” to the EPA Acting Inspector General for further investigation. This comes after finding that there were “astonishing sums of tax dollars awarded to unqualified recipients, and severe deficiencies in regulatory oversight under the prior administration” to the tune of $20 billion.

The EPA’s environmental justice offices were also expanded under former President Joe Biden, when the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights Office was launched in September of 2022. The office was created to “enhance the agency’s ability to infuse equity, civil rights, and environmental justice principles and priorities into all EPA practices, policies, and programs,” according to an EPA press release. Billions of dollars were also earmarked for the EPA’s climate and environmental justice initiatives through Biden’s signature climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act.

Zeldin has already scrapped millions of dollars’ worth of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and environmental justice grants, some of which were given to a Stacey Abrams’ linked election outreach initiative in Georgia, and others were given to a far-left climate activist group, Climate Justice Alliance. The move to dismantle the offices aligns with President Donald Trump’s broad push to cut wasteful spending and shrink federal bureaucracy to save taxpayer dollars.

EPA spokeswoman Molly Vaseliou described the elimination of the environmental justice offices as “organizational improvements” to the NYT.

“President Trump was elected with a mandate from the American people,” Zeldin said in a statement Feb. 21, the same week Zeldin uncovered $2 billion in EPA waste. “Part of this mandate includes the elimination of forced discrimination programs.”

Update: @EPA just notified 8 recipients of $20 BILLION in Biden EPA “gold bars” that their grants have been TERMINATED!

It is my commitment to President Trump, Congress, and you, that EPA will be an exceptional steward of your tax dollars. I’ll have it no other way! pic.twitter.com/PjJ5WOlaY1

— Lee Zeldin (@epaleezeldin) March 11, 2025

The EPA defined “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.”

Zeldin promised in a Feb. 11 statement that the EPA under Trump “will be focused on our core mission to protect human health and the environment.”

“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,” he added.

The EPA did not respond to the Daily Caller news Foundation’s request for comment.