The second Trump administration’s disastrous early-term actions do nothing to address the economic inequality that our political classes have long ignored. In its first two weeks, the administration has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords, reversed federal initiatives on environmental justice, withheld public health information, frozen spending on environmental and climate mitigation programs, threatened to withhold federal disaster aid, and just recently threatened to fire more than 1,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) workers who focus on climate and environmental enforcement.
These actions and more have attacked our Constitution, our federal institutions, public servants, immigrants and workers, and our basic civil rights. They have inflicted unnecessary — but intentional — violence and chaos onto the American people, and they will only make the cost-of-living crisis and our quality of life worse.
These hostile actions will only continue to escalate and endanger us as the Trump administration continues to implement Project 2025, which is designed to benefit no one except billionaires, the fossil fuel industry, and other corporate interests. The administration has presented the American people with a false choice: we must choose between a safe environment for our families and communities, or economic opportunity. But what they have given us is, in fact, a lose-lose proposition for the working class that will only worsen the threats against our safety, health, and autonomy.
These actions also run counter to the most fundamental feature of a representative government: that it should serve its people. It is the government’s job to protect our health and safety. It is the government’s job to defend us from the destabilizing impacts of rising global temperatures. And it is the government’s job to immediately address climate change to secure a stable and livable climate and preserve it for future generations.
For decades, presidents and lawmakers in both houses of Congress worked in a bipartisan manner across the three co-equal branches of government to uphold and improve federal laws, plans, policies, rules, and programs to hold polluters accountable and protect Americans in both red and blue states from dirty air, water, and toxic waste. These were hard-fought victories won by civil rights leaders and members of environmental justice communities that have benefited all Americans, and they must be celebrated, not dismantled.
The Center for Progressive Reform opposes the Trump administration’s destructive actions and remains steadfast alongside environmental justice communities and our allies in our commitment to harnessing the power of law, public policy, and collective action to advance a vision in which every family and community can prosper in a safe and healthy environment with clean air, water, and soil and where no one is overburdened by waste and pollution.
This work must, and will, continue.
Call to Action
There are many ways you can show up for environmental and social justice and work to change the material conditions where you live. Here are just a few.
- Start by asking yourself who in your life and community is most vulnerable and likely to be immediately harmed. Reach out to them and ask to learn more about how they are feeling and what they need. Make sure everyone knows their rights. Ask yourself what you can do and are willing to do to help and protect them.
- Who is already doing the work? What do they need? Join organizations building collective power at the local, state, or other levels on issues like climate justice, racial and economic justice, reproductive rights, queer and trans liberation, or other issues important to you. You don’t need to do everything, but you can do one thing.
- Make sure your elected representatives at the local, state, and federal levels hear from you and know that you oppose cuts – directed by unelected billionaires – to agency and program budgets that are critical for the public safety net addressing climate change and increased subsidies and tax credit handouts to fossil fuel companies.
- Register to vote and encourage everyone you know to also register. Don’t forget we will have the opportunity to vote for Congress again in 2026, and local and special elections happen every year.
- Finally, please take good care of yourself and those around you so we can remain strong.
