James' World 2

Hmmm…A president for the people?

Click the link below the picture

.

CLIMATEWIRE | President Donald Trump’s cancellation of a 31-year-old environmental justice directive threatens the health of tens of millions of people in minority or low-income communities, which have often been dumping grounds for pollution, waste sites, and heavy industry, said civil rights advocates and experts.

Revoking a 1994 executive order by President Bill Clinton removes a mandate that survived four subsequent presidencies, including Trump’s first term, and required federal agencies to address the “high and adverse” environmental and health effects of their decisions on areas with high rates of poverty or large minority populations.

“It’s turning the clock back on decades of work,” said Peggy Shepard, co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, based in New York. “They’re working to eliminate policies and programs that support equity, support environmental and climate justice, and that’s just going to have a harmful effect on the health and well-being of so many people in these disadvantaged communities.”

Clinton’s Executive Order 12898, signed in February 1994, required federal agencies to analyze environmental and public health hazards in minority or low-income communities and to avoid adding to them.

Trump, in his own executive order that repealed the Clinton-era mandate, said the policies violate federal civil rights laws, sow racial division, and “deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”

Following Trump’s revocation, agencies will review each program for areas where “race and other marginalization identities are considered by the agency and how they are considered,” George Washington University law professor Emily Hammond said. Political appointees will lead the reviews and give reports to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

“It will be OMB that’s actually giving the final say to policies that are eliminated,” said Hammond, who was Energy Department deputy counsel in the Biden administration. “This process takes a while.”

Trump framed his revocation — and several others Tuesday — as an effort to end “illegal preferences and discrimination” in government.

Trump’s directive also will bar most federal grant programs from prioritizing projects that help minority or low-income communities. It also axes a 60-year-old equal employment executive order and several diversity and inclusion policies. Critics said the president’s moves ignore research about the health and financial effects of pollution on poor people.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the complete article:

.

__________________________________________