Vice President Kamala Harris tours a solar array prior to making remarks promoting the Inflation Reduction Act at the University of Buffalo in New York. Malik Rainey/CNP/ZUMA

There’s one line in the sprawling, 900-hundred page document known as Project 2025 that sketches out a plan to eliminate hundreds of millions dollars of federal money meant to help protect some of the most disadvantaged people in the country from pollution and the effects of global warming.

Project 2025, crafted by the conservative-think tank the Heritage Foundation, is widely-acknowledged to be a blueprint for a potential Trump presidency—despite his efforts to distance himself from it. The line proposes halting “all grants to advocacy groups” and reviewing “which potential federal investments will lead to tangible environmental improvements.” This almost certainly targets initiatives passed under President Joe Biden that seek to serve communities disproportionately affected by climate change or legacy pollution, also known as environmental justice communities.

Project 2025 proposes halting “all grants to advocacy groups.”

The Inflation Reduction Act appropriated an estimated 1.2 trillion in federal dollars to fund a variety of programs, most of of which were focused on climate change. It represents the biggest investment in climate action taken by the United States to date. On top of this, Biden’s Justice 40 initiative aims to ensure that 40 percent of federal climate-related funding goes towards marginalized communities.

A portion of existing funds from the IRA are administered through the Environmental Protection Agency and are meant for advocacy groups, which often partner with state and local governments to help get money to the country’s neediest people. A subset of advocacy groups that receive federal funding are environmental justice groups, which advocate for climate change mitigation and increased access to a pollution-free environment for residents in low-income and BIPOC communities, which are often disproportionately located near sources of pollution.

If it followed Project........

© Mother Jones