Analysis: Environmental Justice (EJ) communities swung more decisively toward Trump than non-EJ communities
By Marc Morano
March 3, 2025
Environmental Justice Communities Swing Towards Trump
By Alex Trembath and Lauren Teixeira
In one of his early acts as president, Joe Biden directed his executive agencies to determine “how certain federal investments might be made toward a goal that 40 percent of the overall benefits flow to disadvantaged communities.” This direction led to the Justice40 Initiative and the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), which determined which census tracts qualified for disproportionate funds based on more than thirty indicators across eight categories of burdens including energy, legacy pollution, workforce development, transportation and more. This turned out to be a significant portion of the country; as of 2023, 33% of Americans lived in an environmental justice community, according to the CEJST.
It should not be surprising, given the scope of the communities, that the goals of environmental justice as construed by the Biden administration were also broad and nebulous. Under the Biden administration, “environmental justice” came to encompass not just local environmental remediation—toxic waste, lead pipes, asbestos, and so on—but helping “communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis” with renewable energy investments and generally stimulating the economy by creating “good paying, high quality jobs” in parts of the country “too often overlooked and underserved.”
All noble goals, to be sure; but it quickly became clear that voters were more comfortable with the earlier, narrower idea of environmental justice than the broadly ambitious one espoused by the Biden administration.
https://www.climatedepot.com/2025/03/03/analysis-environmental-justice-ej-communities-swung-more-decisively-towards-trump-than-non-ej-communities/
