As Trump Takes Office Again, Earthjustice Is Ceding No Ground

The Trump administration and the Republican majority in Congress do not have a mandate for poisoned air and water, more cancer and asthma, or spiraling climate chaos. People expect their elected leaders to deliver on the basics of health and safety.

Earthjustice will be there to hold President Trump and members of Congress accountable. We are the nation’s leading environmental law organization. For more than 50 years, we’ve used our legal and policy expertise to build better, lasting environmental protections and defend those protections in court.

Republicans hold a fragile and narrow governing majority. In the House of Representatives, they are beginning a new Congress with an even smaller edge than they had before the election. Because President Biden appointed more than 230 federal judges, the Trump administration will have a harder time pushing drastic changes through the nation’s courts.

That isn’t to say fighting Trump’s agenda will be easy.

President Trump has made the goals for his second term clear. He will try to accelerate the drilling that will deepen our country’s dependence on fossil fuels — and the world’s descent into a more dangerous climate reality. He’ll try to gut the regulations that protect clean air and water and keep toxic chemicals out of our bodies. And he’ll try to appoint more ideological judges that will further politicize our courts and erode government protections that we all depend on.

Decades of work made the gains of the last four years possible. That hard-earned progress is deeply rooted and popular. No matter what comes, we won’t cede our ground.

Earthjustice attorney Stu Gillespie listens as opposing counsel presents arguments in Utah’s Third District Court in Salt Lake City. (Spenser Heaps for Earthjustice)

The path forward

Over 14 presidential administrations, Earthjustice and our partners have dramatically improved the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink. We are making real headway on climate change, pushing 158 coal power plant units into retirement and catalyzing a clean energy transition. And it’s our lawsuits that have made the Endangered Species Act powerful enough to keep 99% of the species it protects from slipping into extinction.

One election will not erase those victories. And it won’t deter us.

We know we can win against President Trump and his allies — because we’ve done it before.

Whenever and wherever the first Trump administration threatened our air, water, precious habitats, and climate, Earthjustice attorneys took them to court. We prevailed 85% of the time. This time around, we will be contending with tougher courts, including the Supreme Court’s ultra right-wing majority. But over the last four years, we have built our capacity to navigate the new legal landscape. We continue to win high-impact cases and solve court-made problems with legislative fixes.

We are confident we can beat back many of the coming attacks. From Project 2025 and the statements of Trump’s cabinet nominees, we know the new administration will want to rehash many of the same old fights — fights that we have won because the law and public opinion are on our side. If and when the administration pursues more radical ideas, most judges will be hard-pressed to go along with lawless abuse of power. Meanwhile, stacking federal agencies with loyalists rather than experts will constrain the Trump administration’s ability to advance any policy agenda effectively.

Here are some of our priorities we will defend during President Trump’s second term:

A water researcher tests a sample of water for PFAS at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Center For Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response in Cincinnati. (Joshua A. Bickel / AP)

1. Protecting families and communities from deadly pollution

Regardless of who they supported, no voter cast a ballot for dirty industries to ramp up pollution or poison our food, water, and communities. The last Trump administration tried to shield chemical companies from scrutiny and adopted rules that would have left people exposed to lead paint and lead-contaminated drinking water. Earthjustice successfully sued the government to end secrecy loopholes for the “forever chemicals” PFAS and other toxic chemicals. We also challenged the dangerously flawed lead rules. This work paved the way for much stronger regulations when the Biden administration took over, delivering health benefits — particularly for kids freed from the scourge of lead poisoning — and billions of dollars in net economic benefits.

We will work to preserve these and other gains. If the Trump administration wants to undo new protections against soot that will prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths by 2032, we will have that fight. Similarly, we will defend new chemical disaster rules that protect the one in three U.S. children who go to school near dangerous chemical facilities.

A male greater sage-grouse performs a spring courtship ritual in Carbon County, Wyoming. (Noppadol Paothong)

2. Preserving precious ecosystems and biodiversity

President Trump will attempt to strip away protections from some of the most unique and fragile ecosystems in the country, opening them up to drilling and energy extraction. These are the places we must defend to reverse the planet’s rapidly declining biodiversity.
When the Trump administration tried to shrink Bears Ears National Monument in Utah to mine sacred Indigenous lands, we fought back, litigating alongside five Native American Tribes. In the Western plains, our work protected more than a million acres of sage grouse habitat on public lands the Trump administration tried to open to oil and gas drilling. And in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, we defended one of the world’s largest wild salmon runs from the proposed Pebble Mine, which Trump’s EPA rushed to greenlight. The Biden administration restored and reaffirmed those protections in its first year. We’ve won these kinds of high-stake battles before to protect our ecosystems and the biodiversity they sustain, and we are prepared to do it again.

A bowhead whale and calf surface in the Arctic Ocean. (Amelia Brower / NOAA)

3. Preventing a new oil and gas rush

We all want cheap, abundant energy. But doubling down on climate-warming oil and gas is extremely costly when you factor in the toll from natural disasters and public health emergencies. The Trump administration wants to turn over our public lands and tax dollars to further enrich the fossil fuel industry rather than accelerating the transition to clean energy. But we will not let them unleash this onslaught of fossil fuels. In the previous Trump administration, we secured a permanent ban on Arctic offshore drilling. This win, plus work over a five-year period spanning both Trump and Biden administrations, stopped oil and gas development across 250 million acres of public lands and waters.

GRID Alternatives employees install no-cost solar panels on the rooftop of a low-income household in Pomona, California. GRID Alternatives, a nonprofit, has been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money through the IRA’s Solar for All program, which Earthjustice helped to pass and is working to defend. (Mario Tama / Getty Images)

4. Protecting historic investments in the new clean economy

President Trump will attempt to roll back the Inflation Reduction Act, the single largest federal investment in clean energy in U.S. history. The visionary law has already created more than 300,000 jobs, particularly in red states. We will defend the law’s tax credits that have helped Americans save billions of dollars on electric vehicles, heat pumps, solar panels, and other energy efficient appliances. We will carry on the momentum of creating a just, equitable clean energy transition that benefits all people.

No matter what happens over the next 100 days — or the next four years — one thing is certain: We are ceding no ground in the fight for a safe and stable climate, clean air, clean water, and a thriving web of life.

With your help, we will defend the progress we have made and keep moving forward.