Since the start of the second Trump administration, hundreds of government websites have experienced changes or removals of environmental regulation information. The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative catalogued 879 significant changes across 639 webpages. Key targets for alteration included environmental justice language, which saw a complete erasure of evidence of environmental racism. Environmental hazards disproportionately affect marginalized communities. Unlike the Biden administration, which prioritized these issues, the Trump administration removed related language nearly immediately after taking office, impacting the ability to address environmental justice effectively.
"We have seen a complete erasure of evidence of environmental racism," said Gretchen Gehrke, cofounder of EDGI and the web governance program lead.
"Within days, federal agencies stripped equity-related language from their websites and within one month, all federal agencies had removed their environmental justice websites and webpages."
"This restriction of language and information facilitates the denial of facts and generation of misinformation, undermining our collective ability to address these issues."
The Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, used to identify disadvantaged communities disproportionately affected by environmental hazards and poverty to help allocate federal funding during the Biden administration, was taken down on inauguration day.
#environmental-justice #government-regulation #trump-administration #climate-change #information-transparency
Collection
[
|
...
]