Environmental and justice advocates had expressed concern about a second Trump presidency, citing Project 2025’s threat to climate action, environmental enforcement and PFAS regulations.
Donald Trump’s return to the White House raises concerns among environmental and justice advocates.
Overview:
– Donald Trump’s return to the White House has alarmed environmental and justice advocates, who have expressed concerns about his previous administration’s rollback of environmental rules and provisions.
– The administration’s ability to shape future environmental policy may depend on the still-undetermined makeup of the U.S. House, the degree of independence federal agencies maintain, and the ability of Michigan and other states to challenge federal environmental rollbacks.
– Trump’s campaign of retribution against ‘the enemy within’ and his promises to be a ‘dictator’ have raised fears that civil liberties and democratic institutions will be under threat with the new administration.
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has alarmed environmental and justice advocates, who acknowledge the danger but sounded a defiant tone.
“This is a dark day,” Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous said in a statement. But he voiced a note of optimism, saying that the clean energy transition is already underway.
“Trump can’t change the reality that an overwhelming majority of Americans want more clean energy, not more fossil fuels,” he said.
Scott Holiday, executive director of the grassroots nonprofit Detroit Action, acknowledged “anxieties about the future of democracy” but said, “We refuse to let them become a barrier to the future wins we know are possible.”
Trump’s previous administration rolled back 125 environmental rules and provisions. But the administration’s ability to shape future environmental policy may depend on the still- undetermined makeup of the U.S. House, the degree of independence federal agencies maintain and the ability of Michigan and other states to challenge federal environmental rollbacks.
Trump and his associates have deployed racist, violent and antidemocratic rhetoric during the campaign, raising fears that civil liberties and democratic institutions will be under threat with the new administration. The former and future president has promised to carry out a campaign of retribution against “the enemy within” and to be a “dictator,” albeit only on “day one.”
The hard-right Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 offers a blueprint for how Trump could consolidate control over government agencies. It also targets environmental enforcement, PFAS regulations, and federal legislation to address the climate crisis.
Trump claimed to “know nothing” about Project 2025 during the campaign, although staffers from his former administration wrote large portions of the plan.
Climate action will hang in the balance under Trump
Trump’s record and Project 2025 suggest climate action will be in the crosshairs under the new administration. Trump previously pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, and Project 2025 looks to eliminate Environmental Protection Agency climate programs and increase oil and gas drilling on federally owned lands and waters.
Project 2025 also seeks to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure law, which have invested in clean energy and transit.
However, David Coursen, a former EPA attorney and a member of the nonprofit Environmental Protection Network, previously told Planet Detroit that repealing these laws may be difficult because the IRA and bipartisan infrastructure law have financed popular public works programs.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other Republicans have said they may want to preserve the IRA’s tax credits for clean energy projects. Several Republicans have also taken credit for investments that the bipartisan infrastructure bill brought to their districts, although they voted against the legislation.
With its own goal of achieving 100% renewable energy by 2040, Michigan may be able to counteract federal climate rollbacks at the state level. However, with Republicans taking over the Michigan House, climate action at the state level is likely to face headwinds here, too.
In any case, efforts by individual states may do little to compensate for the lack of U.S. engagement in global climate initiatives.
In response to Trump’s election, leaders in other countries have pledged to continue the work of addressing the climate crisis.
“The US election result is a setback for global climate action, but the Paris Agreement has proven resilient and is stronger than any single country’s policies,” said Laurence Tubiana, chief executive of the European Climate Foundation.
Dialing back enforcement and PFAS regulations, inflicting ‘trauma’
Project 2025 proposes revisiting the “designation of PFAS chemicals as ‘hazardous substances’,” which could endanger Michigan’s efforts to address the toxic PFAS pollution at thousands of sites statewide.
Tim Whitehouse, executive director for the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and a former EPA attorney, told Planet Detroit that Project 2025 also deprioritizes enforcement, which could allow companies manufacturing PFAS and other harmful substances to avoid accountability even if regulations remain in place.
“You’ll see an unlevel playing field develop where industries know they will get away with certain things, and so the compliance rates will be lower,” he said.
Russel Vought, a Trump ally and former director of the Office of Management and Budget who worked on Project 2025, described plans for the EPA in dramatic terms in speeches uncovered by ProPublica.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”
Michigan may be able to partially cover a decline in enforcement or weakened rules with its own laws and enforcement measures. However, the state could struggle to do so if there are budget cuts at the federal level, and could face challenges from a divided state legislature.
Federal funding accounted for 43% of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy’s budget in 2023-2024, with roughly 35% coming from the EPA.
Experts sound alarm on threat to democracy
Project 2025 has been described as an “Orbánist” program for consolidating control over the government, referring to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a Trump ally. The plan looks to revive a proposal from Trump’s first term to use a Schedule F order to fire as many as 50,000 career civil servants, which could politicize the civil service.
Donald Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, told the Guardian that large-scale civil servant firings would “reduce the capacity and performance of the federal government (and) enable democratic backsliding or anti-democratic behavior to become more common.”
However, Kevin Deegan-Krause, a professor of political science at Wayne State University, told Planet Detroit that consolidating power in a decentralized nation like the United States could be difficult. He said that independent federal bodies like the Federal Reserve and states and municipalities provide “points of formal institutional resistance.”
Deegan-Krause said Trump’s presidency likely means a system with declining faith in elections and other processes, not a Hungarian-style government.
“It’s not dictatorship or civil war, but it’s a state that does not allow anything to get done,” he said.
Yet, eroding democratic norms and kneecapping regulatory agencies could manifest in real harm to public health and the environment.
In July, Sean McBrearty, Michigan director for the nonprofit Clean Water Action, said that Michigan has experience with what happens when democracy is undermined, pointing out that it was a state-appointed emergency manager who decided to switch to improperly treated Flint River water, leading to widespread lead poisoning in the city.
“The Flint water crisis really showed what happens when you take democracy away from the people,” he said.
Read all of Planet Detroit’s democracy coverage here.
Our coverage goes beyond elections to help you understand how our democracy works and what your role is.
Brian Allnutt is a senior reporter and contributing editor at Planet Detroit. He covers the climate crisis, environmental justice, politics and open space.
