Climate movement strikes back with first-of-its-kind class action lawsuit against EPA

When Donald Trump won reelection, Jennifer Hadayia knew she'd need a good lawyer. As the executive director of Air Alliance Houston, an environmental nonprofit advocacy organization that works to reduce the risks of air pollution on public health, she had fought the first Trump administration in court already on a variety of issues.

But when Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, began terminating environmental justice grants awarded by the Biden-era EPA in January and announced "the greatest day of deregulation" in mid-March to dismantle dozens of environmental policies, Hadaiya was gobsmacked: "We are in the very worst possible situation to couple regulatory rollbacks with funding decimation."

Hadayia isn't the only one in this position. Zeldin's immediate termination of some $3 billion from the Environmental and Climate Justice block program impacted 350 environmental organizations, cities and tribes that all saw their grants evaporate without warning.