"State environmental justice standards remain out of the president’s reach, complicating his rush to expand fossil fuels."
"President Donald Trump wants to get environmental justice out of the federal government. In state capitals, those ideas are more firmly entrenched than ever.
Democratic governors and lawmakers have spent years — especially after the 2020 police murder of George Floyd — trying to embed concepts of environmental justice into permitting reviews. And while they remain a shadow of what advocates have demanded, several states now scrutinize energy projects for their cumulative impacts on poor and non-white communities that typically experience disproportionate pollution.
That will limit the impact of Trump’s opening salvo of executive orders, experts and advocates say. Even if the sweeping federal rollback survives legal challenges, state permitting will provide an environmental justice backstop beyond Trump’s reach — at least in some places.
About one-third of states have their own version of the National Environmental Policy Act. The measures incorporate some long-standing elements of federal permitting into state policy, such as the consideration of social or historical impacts into project reviews."
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