Protesters Rally in SF in Support of EPA, as Trump Cuts Climate Funds

Updated 3:16 p.m. Tuesday

More than 100 people rallied outside the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regional headquarters in San Francisco on Tuesday, denouncing attempts by the Trump administration to gut environmental laws and eliminate environmental justice programs.

Passing cars honked in support as the crowd chanted, “We want clean air.” Attendees held up signs like “Our planet, our health” and “Let’s stop these money-grabbing maniacs from wrecking our world” as some EPA employees watched the protest from their office windows.

The groups rallied in what they described as a defense of their communities from the “White House, billionaires and polluters.”

“We’re here today to defend the EPA as an institution, so it can carry out its true mission,” said Bradley Angel, executive director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice. While, at times, Angel said, the agency’s mission has been weakened by lax enforcement, its vital public service needs to continue.

“They needed to improve, but they need to exist,” Angel said. “This is a life or death issue.”

Climate groups across the Bay Area have seen federal grants canceled or frozen over the last few months. Some told KQED they do not know the status of their funding because agency staffers have been ordered not to communicate with them. Others are blindly billing for their projects with no assurance that they will be reimbursed.

In February, EPA officials terminated $20 billion in climate grants issued by the Biden administration. The money was meant to finance clean energy and environmental projects through a so-called green bank. Environmental groups filed a lawsuit in response.

At least $60 million in federal funding for climate projects across the Bay Area is at risk, potentially stalling wildfire prevention efforts, trail building and more. That’s according to a survey by Together Bay Area, which represents dozens of the region’s nonprofits, tribes and public agencies.

“We found out that nature-based solutions to the climate crisis are slowing down and stopping because of the federal administration’s orders,” said Annie Burke, the group’s executive director. “That’s not a good thing. Climate change doesn’t care about what’s happening in Washington, D.C.”

Administration officials have targeted diversity, equity and inclusion programs, calling them wasteful spending that needs to be cut to align with orders from President Donald Trump. The agency shuttered its environmental justice offices nationwide.

Lee Zeldin, EPA’s administrator, said in a statement that environmental justice has been used “primarily as an excuse to fund left-wing activists instead of actually spending those dollars to directly remediate environmental issues for those communities.”

Zeldin also announced 31 actions meant to assign more authority to the states and relax federal regulations. The administration argued that this would lower the cost of living while supporting the energy and automobile industries.

“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” Zeldin said.

Kamillah Ealom, director of All Things Bayview, said these policies will be devastating to residents in her shoreline community, which already contends with the lasting environmental and health effects of historic toxic waste dumping.

“Elon and Trump are coming for our fight,” Ealom said. “We already had to motivate the EPA to do their jobs. Now, Trump has just silenced and intimated them even more.”