We Just Won Our First Victory Against This Trump Administration

What happened: Earthjustice has sued the Trump administration several times for its unlawful attacks on regulations that protect our planet, our health, and our democracy. We are already seeing results from our legal work. Thanks to one of our first lawsuits, the Department of Agriculture has agreed to restore critical information about climate change that it purged from its websites, a move we challenged on behalf of farmers who depend on this data.

Why it matters: This win is proof that the power of the law is essential in the fight against the Trump administration’s climate denial agenda.

For our clients, the win is a major relief. Farmers rely on these pages to adapt to increasingly extreme weather and learn what funding is available for adaptation projects. Limiting their access to information on emerging markets and federal funding opportunities directly threatens their financial stability.

Our lawsuit was part of a longstanding push for climate-smart agriculture and reducing industrial agriculture’s climate impact. We are not backing down now.

How was the Trump administration censoring climate information?

• Pulling down websites: In late January, the USDA began removing all landing pages focused on climate change, which include critical resources on climate-smart farming, sites to access billions of dollars for conservation practices, and climate adaptation strategies.

• USDA subagencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the Farm Service Agency also removed entire climate change sections from their websites.

• Part of a trend: These removals followed President Trump’s various orders reversing federal climate policies, as well as cuts to billions in conservation funding and widespread USDA staff layoffs.

How did Trump’s actions threaten farmers and food resiliency?

• Greater financial instability. Agriculture is already one of the industries most affected by climate change, with excessive heat and wildfires causing over $16.5 billion in crop losses in 2023 alone. Without access to USDA adaptation programs that provide billions of dollars in grant funding that help mitigate or manage the impacts of climate change, farmers would be left empty-handed in adapting to the extreme weather, shifting growing seasons, and how best to enter climate-smart markets.

• Vulnerable to increasingly extreme weather. Industrial agriculture is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. By censoring best practices for carbon sequestration and sustainable agriculture, USDA made it harder and more costly for farmers to take the steps needed to limit the very climate pollution that is making it more difficult for them to farm successfully.

• More crop failures and higher consumer costs. Removing the USDA’s climate-smart conservation guidance and funding reduced farmers’ access to best practices for soil health and water management. These practices are particularly critical as worsening droughts and other extreme weather affect the overall quantity and quality of U.S. crops, which could weaken American food security and increase costs for consumers.

How did Earthjustice fight back?

• Going to court: On behalf of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Environmental Working Group, Earthjustice sought a court order to force the USDA to restore access to key webpages and prevent further removal of vital climate-related information. USDA then reversed course, committing to restore the pages in response to our lawsuit.

• Working in community: Earthjustice is also connecting with entities like Harvard and Yale Law Schools and End of Term Archive to protect critical government data from deletion.
• The bigger picture: We have filed a string of lawsuits against the Trump administration to protect environmental progress by defending our oceans from oil and gas drilling, challenging an illegal power grab that would make air pollution worse in New York City, and fighting to unfreeze funding for programs that are bringing clean energy to everyone.

We won’t back down.

• For 50 years and through 14 presidential administrations, we have fought to make our nation’s food system safer and more climate friendly. During the first Trump administration, for example, we successfully challenged Trump’s efforts to weaken school nutrition standards that affect 30 million children who eat school meals each day.

• Progress in the states: Earthjustice is also partnering with allies at the state level to reduce agriculture’s climate and environmental impact. In January, after years of advocacy by Earthjustice and our partners, New York’s Governor Hochul signed a bill expanding the state’s food donation and food scraps recycling program. The bill will help address food insecurity and aid the state’s efforts to meet its climate goals by dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions from food waste.
• The climate crisis is worsening, and USDA should be expanding access to federal farming information and funding programs, not hiding critical agricultural data for ideological reasons. Earthjustice will keep fighting for the just climate future and sustainable food system that we all deserve.