Environmentalists’ worst fears met and surpassed in Trump’s first 100 days

By Kiley Bense Bob Berwyn Dennis Pillion Georgina Gustin Jake Bolster Marianne Lavelle Wyatt Myskow Inside Atmosphere News This article originally appeared on Inside Environment News a nonprofit non-partisan news organization that covers circumstances vigor and the climate Sign up for their newsletter here One hundred days into the second Trump administration numerous environmentalists worst fears about the new presidency have been realized and surpassed Facing a spate of orders pronouncements and actions that target America s bulk cherished natural information and greater part vulnerable communities advocates fear the Trump agenda unchecked will set the country back decades It is not an overstatement to say that the Trump administration has launched the worst White House assault in history on the habitat and residents wellbeing Day by day and hour by hour the administration is destroying one of the signature achievements of our time announced Manish Bapna the president and CEO of the environmental nonprofit Natural Support Defense Council NRDC If this assault succeeds it could take a generation or more to repair the damage U S Sen Sheldon Whitehouse D-R I ranking member of the Senate Circumstances and Society Works Committee announced in a declaration to Inside Environment News that the president s corrupt assault on clean air clean water and affordable clean potency has helped make him the least popular president ever days into the job Polling shows President Donald Trump s approval rate percent according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll is lower than any president s at the -day mark since such polling began Trump s fossil-fuel-funded gangster cabinet prioritizes lawlessness and disdain for the Constitution not lowering household vitality costs or incentivizing economic advancement or reducing impurity Whitehouse declared The American people know this has made them worse off and it will get worse still A press release issued by the White House on Earth Day last week presented a very different picture Titled On Earth Day We Absolutely Have a President Who Follows Science the memo outlined key actions taken by Trump on the milieu so far These included promoting resource innovation for a healthier future such as carbon capture and nuclear capacity cutting wasteful regulations like emissions rules for coal plants protecting wildlife by ordering a pause on offshore wind and protecting society lands by opening more of them to oil gas and mineral extraction while ensuring responsible management When reached for comment the White House did not respond directly to the criticisms leveled at the administration for its environmental record so far but instead affirmed a commitment to protection repeating words Trump used during his campaign and since his voting process As the President has reported the American people deserve clean air and clean water stated White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers In less than days EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is taking measures to hastily remove toxins from our water and milieu provide clean land for Americans and use commonsense policies to Power the Great American Comeback To environmental experts the Earth Day press release was indicative of a pattern in the administration s communications with the population This is really a master class in doublespeak explained Hannah Perls a senior staff attorney at the Harvard University Environmental and Potential Law Initiative Rather than supporting a healthier future in its first days the administration slashed executive agencies and rescinded rules that lower toxicity levels and improve population wellbeing outcomes Instead of force innovation the president championed coal while killing renewable capacity projects Instead of protecting inhabitants lands Trump fired thousands of parks and forest system employees threatened to gut the Endangered Species Act and encouraged logging and drilling on federal lands And instead of following science the president cut critical research funding across disciplines and ignored expert consensus on atmosphere change and conservation President Donald Trump speaks about his accomplishments on his first days at Macomb County Population College Sports Expo Center Tuesday April in Warren Mich Credit AP Photo Alex Brandon The administration which has doubled down on surroundings denial is also withdrawing the U S from the Paris Agreement the treaty designed to help the world avoid the preponderance dangerous consequences of the conditions situation and cut loose the scientists working on the nation s key environment assessment While it s typical for a new administration to alter existing policies the actions of the second Trump administration on circumstances and the habitat are unprecedented even compared with Trump s first term We inevitably anticipate approach reversals with every administration whether it s Democrat or Republican Perls stated Those reversals used a scalpel approach where policies were considered and changed on a case-by-case basis This time around they re using dynamite she noted A green light for garbage People under don t have any real life experience with just how dirty the air was before the Clean Air Act was passed in announced David Hawkins senior attorney in context and force at NRDC Well I do He described living in New York City in the s his window sill black with soot in the morning plumes of smoke pouring from scores of apartment buildings building furnaces and incinerators the tunnel of haze obscuring Manhattan s long avenues the lead in the air spewed from all of these automobiles trucks and buses Over his lifetime Hawkins mentioned in a call with the press in April he watched as regime regulations helped to curb this litter Regulations lowered toxic emissions They reduced rates of respiratory illnesses heart infection and premature deaths And they brought huge economic and environmental benefits to the U S Here s the scary news These gains can be lost he stated Keeping the air clean is not automatic Hawkins declared the administration s attempts to sunset or repeal swaths of environmental regulations could undo the progress of the last years We don t know exactly how broadly this executive order will be applied but it could mean the end of protections that are keeping our air clean he noted If the rules are sunset there s no legal obligation for these polluters to keep their equipment operating Environmental attorneys have called the sunsetting provision completely unlawful and questioned whether it would ever hold up in court But the order is just one effort of dozens by the administration to roll back regulations and drastically shrink the workforce that writes interprets and enforces those rules The White House plan for the Environmental Protection Agency would cut the budget by percent forcing the agency to operate with less money than it has ever had since its founding in adjusted for inflation Perls worries about the loss of career expertise at the EPA which can t easily be replaced and she is concerned about the signal the orders send to industry even if they are ultimately struck down in court I think it is reasonable to anticipate that countless industries are going to see this as a green light to pollute with abandon she explained The administration has made very clear in this first days who they are for and who they are against mentioned Geoff Gisler initiative director for the Southern Environmental Law Center And as we expected they are looking to empower heavy polluting industries and they are putting the burden on communities to deal with the litter that results from this The SELC is a nonprofit law firm that represents environmental groups across the Southeast on a wide range of cases The group is in the present suing the Trump administration arguing that the administration s freezing of grant funds is an unlawful interference by the executive branch and violates the First Amendment What we re seeing is complete disregard for any sort of legally required process Gisler stated We saw a few of that in the first Trump administration This time they re taking it to a new level Perls and Hawkins both emphasized that the administration s policies if enacted as proposed will have a real-world impact on multiple Americans lives There are very real society robustness harms that come from having our primary general physical condition enforcement agency abandon its obligation to protect and safeguard human vitality Perls noted of cuts at EPA and a March memo saying the agency would no longer consider race or socioeconomic status in its enforcement Communities with more people of color and lower-income residents often face worse trash the conclusion of both historic and current discrimination People will die as a effect of these exposures It might not be the coming day it might not be in six months but people will die she commented The Harvard environmental and vigor law operation is tracking the administration s environmental justice actions in an online database Environmental justice organizations nationwide are reeling from federal funding freezes EPA suspended millions of dollars in grants for projects like planting trees air monitoring and preventing child lead poisoning The agency is also dismantling its environmental justice offices and deleted its environmental justice mapping tool EJ Screen that helps people understand how exposures differ across the nation Causing chaos was the goal explained Patrick Drupp director of environment guidelines for the Sierra Club Small society groups that are counting on that money for environmental justice or public solar projects they can t wait out long court battles even if they ultimately prevail Same thing with federal workers who were illegally fired People can t just sit around and wait eight months for a court circumstance to play out and find out whether they re authentically able to keep their job The administration s efforts to erase and halt federal work on atmosphere and the circumstances have not been limited to EPA At the Department of Homeland Prevention Secretary Kristi Noem ordered the end of all state change exercises and the use of situation change terminology The Federal Urgency Management Agency ended the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities initiative which allocates grants for projects like flood control wildfire management and infrastructure maintenance that reduce catastrophe jeopardy Sweeping cuts at the Department of Medical and Human Services have impacted programs like the Low-Income Housing Vitality Assistance Effort which has seen funding cut off because all of the federal staff administering the activity were fired The effort helps American families with heating and cooling bills weatherizing their homes and keeping their electricity and gas turned on HHS also fired staff members in the Centers for Condition Control and Prevention s Division of Environmental Medical Science and Practice who worked on healthcare issues related to the milieu and conditions change like asthma and air poisoning In February Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the Department of Justice to terminate all environmental justice programs offices and jobs Pam Bondi shown testifying at a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Jan Credit REUTERS Elizabeth Frantz The attack on environmental justice is an attack on the millions of Americans relying on clean air and clean water across our country declared Sen Ron Wyden D-Ore in a press release in response to Bondi s move Trump and his oil-loving cronies are not just making the conditions dilemma worse They are also harming the preponderance vulnerable communities in America In Trump s first administration his organization at EPA framed their approach as back to basics a turning away from action on setting change and back to the air and water quality concerns that were the original impetus for federal environmental law When demanded by Inside Situation News about the environmental record of the second Trump administration s first days a White House official noted various examples the ramping up of efforts to end decades of raw sewage flowing into southern California from Tijuana Mexico and Zeldin s work on a set of proposals to tackle exposure to dangerous forever chemicals known as PFAS But plenty of environmental accomplishments the White House has pointed to raise their own concerns They re trying to kill the administrative state Hannah Perls Harvard University Environmental and Power Law Initiative For example Zeldin has been notably silent on whether the administration will oppose the chemical industry s effort to overturn the Biden administration s PFAS regulations which were accompanied by billion for state-level water testing and cure The White House has touted its speed-up in approval of state plans to implement the Clean Air Act multiple of which were backlogged under the Biden administration Certain clean air groups fear the state plans are being rubber-stamped A White House official also noted that the EPA completed the largest wildfire response in agency history clearing Los Angeles properties of hazardous materials in just days at the start of the administration But local groups protested the EPA s use of a coastal wetland as a staging site for the toxic debris from the Palisades and Eaton fires The administration s cuts have largely been carried out in the name of eliminating waste and led by Trump donor Elon Musk s Department of Cabinet Efficiency DOGE But experts say it s clear from the aggressive scale and speed of the administration s conduct that this is not really the goal If you re trying to cure cancer you excise the tumor You don t kill the person Perls revealed They re not trying to excise a tumor They re trying to kill the administrative state Mass layoffs minimized monuments and Musk Since retaking office Trump has dramatically reconfigured federal agencies that manage Western populace land to the prospective detriment of those landscapes and the wildlife and communities that rely on them In February the National Park Utility fired employees only for two U S District Court judges to order them reinstated destabilizing parks across the country as they prepare for the busiest season of the year Trump has also cut the U S Forest Provision s workforce by percent and thousands of others reportedly accepted resignation offers Funding freezes have stalled vital conservation work Now employees at DOGE overseen by billionaire Musk have been given the reins at the Department of the Interior where Secretary Doug Burgum has touted the idea of selling off constituents lands to address the nation s housing predicament The Trump administration has also issued executive orders to streamline mining and fast-track highly controversial projects Federal constituents lands are owned by all Americans announced Mike Quigley the Arizona state director for the Wilderness Society They re managed by the federal regime on our behalf and so if you re looking to do a mine on inhabitants land the comment period and the NEPA process that the agency undergoes was designed to allow the owners of the land a say That s you me the person down the street your next-door neighbor whoever And when I hear streamlining I worry that that s a euphemism for rubber stamps Fast-tracking mining and oil and gas drilling could threaten particular of America s majority of iconic species and landscapes We have particular of the last best wildlife habitat in the lower commented Alec Underwood activity director of the Wyoming Outdoor Council an environmental nonprofit based in Lander It s irreplaceable Staffing and regulatory whiplash has already had tangible impacts Layoffs have affected real folks who live in our communities and work on constituents lands stated Underwood A lot of them are now out of jobs The oil and gas industry has cheered Trump s actions over the past days The Western Vitality Alliance a Colorado-based contract association for oil and gas companies praised the president s decisive action to promote oil and natural gas rise We ve seen a dramatic shift from an administration that imposed restrictive policies limited permitting and threatened potential projects to one that is actively supporting evolution declared Kathleen Sgamma president of the alliance in a press release Sgamma who withdrew from consideration to lead the Bureau of Land Management after her loyalty to Trump came under scrutiny also lauded the EPA s aggressive deregulatory actions Elsewhere in the West communities and environmentalists are bracing for the reduction or elimination of national monuments In March the Trump administration revealed it would eliminate California s Chuckwalla and S tt tla Highlands national monuments before removing language from a White House fact sheet announcing the decision Last week The Washington Post broadcasted the administration was considering shrinking Baaj Nwaavjo I tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon Ironwood Forest Chuckwalla Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments all despite monuments and their protections enjoying nearly universal popularity with voters Erik Schlenker-Goodrich executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center announced the administration s haphazard approach to governing puts the country in peril It does feel like we re Wile E Coyote he stated We ve run off the proverbial cliff edge and we are hanging in open space with nothing underneath us and that feels deeply perilous He added Gravity will take hold at specific juncture and so I think a lot of organizations like ours are thinking about How do we mitigate the impacts of that fall to things we care about like constituents lands and wildlife in the West free-flowing rivers The administration has also taken aim at conservation and climate-focused programs run by the U S Department of Agriculture USDA stranding tens of thousands of farmers who were counting on funding and technical help from the agency Under Trump s Unleashing American Resource executive order billions of dollars in conservation and situation funding for farmers were at once frozen The order targeted the Biden administration s signature conditions regulation the Inflation Reduction Act which directed billion to farmers for implementing situation practices or potential efficiency measures on their farms Particular of that funding has since been unfrozen by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins but it remains unclear when it will be distributed Lawsuits filed by legal advocacy groups on behalf of farmers are seeking the restoration of specific of that funding An analysis by former USDA employees says the agency owes nearly billion to more than farmers for conservation and power efficiency programs Earlier this month the agency canceled a billion Biden-era operation the Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities rebranding it as the Advancing Markets for Producers plan The agency stated it would only continue funding projects under the scheme according to new criteria Similarly the agency explained it would only fund projects under the Rural Force for America Venture if recipients revise their grant applications to remove harmful DEIA and far-left atmosphere features DEIA stands for Diversity Equity Inclusion and Accessibility a term that includes equal-opportunity efforts in the workplace and other settings The agency which also oversees the Forest Organization issued an exigency situation determination to open up million acres to industrial timber interests a move that environmental groups say will hasten the destruction of old-growth forests and make forests more vulnerable to drought and wildfire The memo came shortly after Trump issued an executive order to expand timber production in the country by percent President Trump has demonstrated his indifference to the necessities of farmers greater part visibly with his erratic and devastating tariff strategy but his administration is also leaving farmers in the lurch when it comes to environment change mentioned Karen Perry Stillerman who oversees food and farm programs for the Union of Concerned Scientists Stillerman noted that the administration scrubbed conditions details from websites forced out environment scientists at USDA and sacked the entire organization that supports the U S Global Change Research Effort worsening fears that the sixth National Context Assessment the comprehensible congressionally mandated scientific document will be cancelled By systematically taking away vital tools that farmers need to thrive in a hotter and more dangerous future Stillerman announced they are endangering all of us A massive setback for situation progress The first days of the administration featured a steady stream of executive orders and directives that critics say would undermine American science domestically and abroad end environment mitigation and adaptation initiatives and increase the use of fossil fuels One of the first acts of Trump s second term was to begin withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement the international context pact for the second time At home Trump declared a national vigor emergency pushed for more oil and gas drilling logging and coal mining and froze the billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund meant to fund clean capacity expansion The private sector has responded to Trump s surroundings framework shifts and erratic tariff implementation by canceling billion worth of planned clean power projects in the U S In March scientists across the country protested the administration s anti-science agenda and far-reaching cuts to federal funding they need to carry out their work At the very least it s a massive setback declared Michael Burger executive director of the Sabin Center for Surroundings Change Law at Columbia University of the first days all-out assault on former President Joe Biden s circumstances agenda and the federal bureaucracy that supports environmental atmosphere and wellbeing protections A larger danger looms beyond the administration s immediate threats to the habitat he disclosed Any new fossil fuel infrastructure will long outlast Trump s term increasing emissions for years to come The Trump administration is taking the rug out from under us disclosed Gretchen Goldman president of the Union of Concerned Scientists During a webinar last week she noted that the attacks on weather and clean potency policies are particularly disturbing and threaten the forward momentum that we need at the federal level she explained The policies are also unfair to the greater part of the rest of the world she added This is especially damaging in light of the fact that the U S is the largest historic emitter of heat-trapping emissions and requirements to play its part in safeguarding the strength and safety of people and the planet she commented American scientists will still make major contributions to the upcoming major conditions reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Situation Change despite the administration s efforts to withdraw the U S establishment from international context processes and setting threats like extreme heat rising sea levels and melting ice remain a focus for the rest of the global science neighborhood The fact that we re isolating ourselves from the rest of the world just seems a profound mistake Erik Schlenker-Goodrich Western Environmental Law Center Specific international researchers have expressed concern about a anticipated loss of access to major facts The U S has had a lead role in the global Argo ocean monitoring arrangement and if funding is cut it could hamper efforts to determine how human-caused warming is affecting tropical storms and hurricanes as well as how key ocean currents are changing Schlenker-Goodrich of the Western Environmental Law Center WELC is concerned about the administration s efforts to isolate the United States from the rest of the world and the unraveling of the country s scientific research threshold I do not see how this isolationism can serve American interests in any sphere let alone in spheres of circumstances action and conservation action he declared Those are global issues with immensely pivotal domestic consequences and the fact that we re isolating ourselves from the rest of the world just seems a profound mistake The administration s circumstances and vigor policies represent a missed opportunity for the United States Burger mentioned It s a missed opportunity to take a leadership role in the improvement of the green business sector It s a missed opportunity to continue to exert important political leadership in the international public on context He added We have a short window in which to make dramatic greenhouse gas emissions reductions We re losing time What will endure Burger revealed the big question about Trump s second days remains unanswered Is this first days a success in any way shape or form he petitioned Or is it a massive failure What will endure from these days of governmental uncertainty and upheaval will hinge on how the courts ultimately respond to the assault on the rule of law and administrative norms he mentioned Gisler at the SELC echoed this assessment The lasting legacy of this administration will be determined by how the nation responds to it he revealed He pointed out that after the previous robber baron era the country saw a surge of help for progressive ideas that led to Social Protection food safety laws civil organization reorganization and other advances There is going to be a lot of disruption and chaos over the next several years but I do believe that at base what this administration is doing does not have the advocacy of the vast majority of people in this country at least when it comes to the ecosystem Gisler declared We ve seen a large number of announcements from agencies and executive orders and press releases from the White House and far less actual administrative action Burger commented If the legal process proceeds the way it s supposed to he mentioned numerous of the administration s orders should be undone Organizations like the NRDC the WELC and the SELC are taking on that fight My assumption is that their attempt is to try to flood the zone and overwhelm people rather than to comply with the law explained Michael Wall NRDC s chief litigation officer We do not intend to be overwhelmed Inside Setting News reporter Lisa Sorg contributed to this article The post Environmentalists worst fears met and surpassed in Trump s first days appeared first on MinnPost