Environmental groups prepare to fight a new Trump administration

Environmental groups are gearing up to push back against the incoming Trump administration, which they expect to make sweeping policy changes more quickly than was seen when Donald Trump took office in 2017.

Based on Trump’s previous actions as president and statements made during the recent campaign, experts, lawyers and advocates offered several predictions for his agenda in office. They expect him to focus on expanding oil and gas drilling, reducing the acreage of preserved federal land and repealing or paring back two of President Joe Biden’s signature legislative accomplishments: the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Environmentalists see the Cabinet picks Trump has announced so far as early steps toward that agenda — people who agree with the goal to “drill, drill, drill” on day one, as Trump put it to Fox News host Sean Hannity in December. Already, Trump has named North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who has called for increases to domestic oil production, as his choice for secretary of the interior, and oil industry CEO Chris Wright as his desired energy secretary.

The first Trump administration took at least 74 actions seen as weakening environmental policy, according to a tracker from the nonpartisan Brookings Institution. The number could be higher in the upcoming term, given Trump’s promises to vastly change the regulatory landscape.

“I think the thing that we’re preparing for more is sort of the potential aggressiveness and disregard for the rule of law,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity. He added that his group will also watch for changes or processes “that are just simply, plainly illegal.”

The center and other environmental organizations, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, anticipate a high volume of legal fights ahead and are already soliciting donations to fund those efforts. Pop-up ads on each site ask for support to counter expected changes to environmental protections.

Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

The NRDC and Center for Biological Diversity both have a record of successfully challenging Trump’s agenda in court. While Trump was in office, the center filed 266 lawsuits against government actions that it saw as threats to the environment and won 87% of them, by its own count. Some of the group’s biggest victories included striking down an offshore drilling project in the Alaskan Arctic and reversing the removal of grizzly bears from the endangered species list. The NRDC, meanwhile, says it filed 163 lawsuits in that time period and won in nearly 90% of those resolved.

Despite Trump’s disavowal of Project 2025 during his campaign, several environmental groups said they nonetheless expect the incoming administration to follow that conservative policy road map, which was put together by the Heritage Foundation, a right-leaning think tank. They are preparing accordingly.

“We’re already seeing people involved in Project 2025 being appointed to the administration,” said Andrew Wetzler, who heads the NRDC’s nature program. “And when you look at that, it’s really quite alarming from the broadest climate perspective.”

The plan calls for achieving “American Energy Dominance” by, in part, stopping what it calls a “war on oil and natural gas.” It recommends discontinuing federal climate research and favors repealing policies passed under Biden that provided billions of dollars in funding for renewable energy.

Jillian Blanchard, who leads the climate change and environmental justice program at Lawyers for Good Government, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, said the group is working to make sure dollars earmarked for clean energy projects under the Inflation Reduction Act can’t be easily clawed back by a new administration.

“We worked with a lot of the federal grantees who either have gotten the money or are announced to receive money,” Blanchard said, describing her group’s efforts to help those clients expedite the payment process and navigate any regulatory compliance issues that arise.

“We intend to continue that work to make sure that that money goes out the door to those intended grantees, whether it’s for climate justice, tackling the climate crisis, environmental justice, transit, etc.,” she added.

Conservation groups also expect a renewed fight over protected federal land, particularly in the Southwest. After President Barack Obama created the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah in 2016, Trump reduced its size by more than 1 million acres after he took office the following year. A cadre of environmental groups filed suit, and the monument was fully restored by Biden in 2021.

Many expect Bears Ears to be targeted again, as well as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which is also in Utah.

“We’re expecting on day one that these national monuments could be dismantled,” said Ethan Aumack, executive director for the Grand Canyon Trust.

He said the group has done scenario planning to be able to respond swiftly to any such attempt.

“I’ll just say this: We’re not working from a blank slate. We saw what happened under President Trump in his first term,” Aumack said. “We believe that it’s unlawful for any president to dismantle national monuments, and we’re ready to take that question to the courts if he tries the same thing again.”

Although he expects fierce fights ahead, Wetzler also pointed to a few types of environmental policies that may be hard for the new Trump administration to dismantle.

Pointing to the Biden administration’s infrastructure and clean-energy investments, he said many elected Republicans may not want to lose the money going to their districts, including leaders in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.

“The vast majority of the funds going towards clean energy — new battery technologies, electric vehicle manufacturing plants, solar manufacturers — are being located in Republican districts around the country and in red states,” Wetzler said. “I think there’s gonna be a lot of pressure on Congress, by the Republican Party, by their own constituents, not to disrupt those investments.”

Secondly, he said, clean water has emerged as an area of relative bipartisan consensus.

“Some of the most avid conservationists are in fact Republicans and are in fact people who live close to the land,” added Wetzler. “My experience tells me that when it comes to preserving access to water, fishable, swimmable lakes, places where people can hike and camp and hunt and fish, there’d be a lot of resistance to that no matter what political party is in charge in Washington.”