Over the past four years, the Biden administration said it has funneled hundreds of billions of dollars to help towns and neighborhoods most harmed by pollution. The money, largely through the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, paid for electric school buses to replace diesel-burning vehicles, brought solar to tribal lands and funded local groups to clean up their communities.

It all came out of a promise President Joe Biden made to devote 40 percent of money dedicated to cutting pollution to the heavily poor, often non-White areas that shoulder a disproportionate burden. Now, as President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team prepares for a second term, this approach - called Justice40 - could be on the chopping block.

Some of Trump’s allies, including some members of Congress, have targeted environmental justice programs for elimination. Over a dozen Republicans asked the House Appropriations Committee last year to zero out funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice programs. And Project 2025 - a right-leaning policy blueprint for the next administration written by many of Trump’s former aides - calls for the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights to be disbanded and returned to the Office of the Administrator.

“‘Environmental justice’ combines woke racial ideology with climate hysteria,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) wrote in a Facebook post last year sharing the letter.

Project 2025, which Trump distanced himself from during the campaign, also suggests the EPA’s general counsel should review the agency’s environmental justice authority under the Civil Rights Act and grant resources to communities affected by pollution based on “neutral constitutional principles.”

In an email, Trump transition spokeswoman Taylor Rogers did not specifically address how the new administration would change the federal government’s approach to environmental justice. But she said Lee Zeldin, Trump’s choice to lead EPA, “will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet.”

Some of Trump’s allies have suggested the term “environmental justice” could be redefined to include economic programs that will have the most impact on disadvantaged Americans’ lives.

Matthew Tejada, who served in the EPA’s Office for Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights from 2013 to 2023 and now works at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said he believes that environmental justice policies and initiatives are at risk.

“Environmental justice and civil rights is not something [Trump’s] administration wants to support or further or advance. They want to obliterate it,” he said.

The environmental justice movement is decades old - President Bill Clinton signed an executive order recognizing its importance 30 years ago - but it has enjoyed little support among many Republicans.

Research has shown that Americans of color and those who are low-income face a higher risk of premature death from the most lethal form of air pollution, fine particulate matter. A 2022 study led by Harvard researchers found that Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Latinos and low-income populations in the United States are being exposed to higher levels of this pollution than Whites and wealthy Americans.

The conservative backlash to environmental justice grew during Biden’s presidency, as Democrats sought to ensure that disadvantaged communities would benefit from billions in renewable energy spending. To some Republicans, environmental justice arguments looked like government-sanctioned favoritism, akin to diversity, equity and inclusion programs - known as DEI - or ESG, environmentally conscious investing.

“It’s like the DEI stuff and the ESG stuff,” said Myron Ebell, who led the EPA transition during Trump’s first term. “It’ll be hard slog for the Trump administration, but I’m sure it’s going to be on their list of things to get rid of.”

Ebell, chairman of the conservative American Lands Council, said that blocking a factory due to concerns over pollution that are “usually exaggerated and unwarranted” hurts the community because “people there won’t have better-paying jobs.”

“What’s the first condition for health? It’s having employment and some wealth so you can afford to go to the doctor and pay your insurance,” he said.

Some conservatives have floated the idea of rebranding environmental justice.

“It might even be repurposed to environmental and economic justice,” said Chuck DeVore, chief national initiatives officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank. This would better reflect the trade-offs communities face when environmental lawsuits or public opposition block new industrial plants, he said.

Tejada said if Trump ends environmental justice programs and fires career staff with institutional knowledge, the EPA will be set back decades.

“It is taking this country backward to a time where wealthy communities and White communities were prioritized, and other communities weren’t just disregarded but would be sacrificed,” he said.

Trump allies said ending these programs, and their funding, will be a challenge. Biden’s pledge to make environmental justice the work of the entire government means that today, there are offices and employees dedicated to addressing the issue scattered throughout the bureaucracy.

“The first problem is to identify the program or the office that’s been created. The second is to figure out how to defund it without raising all kinds of problems, either legal or political,” Ebell said. “It all seems like kind of small potatoes, but it’ll be a big task to locate all of these things.”

Tejada and others said they fear the Trump administration will roll back regulations on emissions from trucks, power plants and factories, and take a hands-off approach to the oil, plastics and chemical industries by not enforcing air and water pollution limits.

Environmental enforcement dropped sharply during Trump’s first term, according to EPA data compiled by the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog organization. EPA inspections of industrial sites, which the agency uses to identify and crack down on polluters, fell from 9,461 in 2016 to 8,172 in 2019 and 3,198 in 2020. During the height of the pandemic, the agency relaxed monitoring and reporting rules, allowing facilities to determine for themselves whether they were in compliance. Inspections grew under the Biden administration, to 7,742 by 2023. That year, 61 percent were conducted in environmental justice communities, according to EPA enforcement data.

On Monday, the Interior Department - which hosted several public listening sessions on environmental justice last year - released plans on how to advance it within the department. Interior, which has 65 programs and 10 local bureaus dedicated to environmental justice, set a goal of increasing employee training and funding for affected communities.

Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a conservative energy research group, said that Trump made gains with Black and Latino voters because of his economic message, not an environmental one. Trump’s support among Hispanic voters grew by 14 percentage points from 2020, reaching 46 percent, a record-high for a Republican presidential candidate since 1980. His support among Black Americans did not change significantly from 2020.

“He brought in African Americans, he brought in Hispanics, he brought in a lot of new voters. He didn’t bring them in on this issue. He brought them in on ‘I want to put more money in your pocket,’” Pyle said.

But in what is known as Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” - an 85-mile stretch between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that is home to numerous industrial facilities - environmental advocate Roishetta Ozane said she was discouraged by Trump’s victory.

“It makes me feel scared and nervous because I know that Trump doesn’t care about us,” said Ozane, the CEO and founder of Vessel Project of Louisiana, a mutual aid environmental organization.

Ozane said her home in Sulphur, Louisiana, sits within a mile of more than a dozen refineries and petrochemical plants, which periodically fill the sky with smoke and flares. She said she that the community would once again have to fight for their environmental protections, with people’s lives and health at stake.

Under Biden, EPA Administrator Michael Regan toured Cancer Alley and visited cities and small towns across Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, assuring residents the government was committed to combating the pollution that had choked them for generations. Disadvantaged communities received a funding boost under Biden. Justice40 applies to more than 500 programs across 19 federal agencies, according to administration officials.

While officials said it has received $613 billion for programs through 2027, they did not specify how much has been spent already, and the next Congress could redirect any remaining funds.

White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory said that the Justice40 initiative and other funding designated under the Biden administration ensured that people across the country will reap the benefits of cleaner air and water.

Local projects have resulted in “reconnecting communities divided by highways, replacing lead pipes, and deploying electric school buses in communities that have been left behind for too long,” Mallory said.

The funding appropriated to programs that are covered by Justice40 was initially approved by Congress through 2027, meaning some agencies have not yet received their full allotment. A Republican-controlled Congress could repeal outstanding allocations.

Manuel Salgado, federal research manager at We Act for Environmental Justice, a nonprofit group, said some community groups fear time is running out. These organizations have already won environmental justice grants from the EPA but are still waiting to find out if they will receive the money before Trump takes office. The grants are aimed at helping communities plant trees, create new parks and install cool roofs on homes.

Many Republicans view much of the EPA’s grantmaking under Biden as wasteful - Project 2025 calls it “driven by ideology instead of need” and recommends suspending all grants over a certain threshold.

“There is a big push to make sure as much of this money that can be allocated is done by the end of the year,” Salgado said.

“Unfortunately, there will be things that fall through the cracks.”

Maxine Joselow and Emily Guskin contributed to this report.