January 20, 2026 — Today marks one year of the second Trump administration’s relentless attempt to dismantle federal environmental and public health protections. By attacking environmental data and science and undermining the public’s Environmental Right to Know (ERTK), the administration is directing federal agencies to serve polluting industry over the health of people and the planet. In response, the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) has worked to protect and advance the ERTK.
The ERTK means that people can know about and influence the environmental issues that affect them. By deleting and altering information on federal websites, the Trump administration is preventing the public from understanding, preparing for, and influencing the trajectory of climate change and other environmental hazards. EDGI tracked 70% more changes in President Trump’s first 100 days in office this time than in 2017, despite tracking fewer URLs. Further, under Trump, the Lee Zeldin-led Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is being politicized and dismantled through derisive public communications and stunning staffing cuts—all while Trump excuses some of the nation’s riskiest emitters from Clean Air Act laws.
ERTK applies to all communities, but especially those disproportionately harmed by environmental hazards and data gaps. EDGI showed how the EPA’s termination of environmental justice grants harms these communities. Yet, even as the Trump administration removes data and dismantles the EPA, EDGI is building participatory technologies and tools that enable civic engagement. EDGI’s data coalition, Public Environmental Data Partners, archived federal environmental data and recreated critical tools like EPA’s EJScreen, and EDGI’s state-by-state FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) guides help communities and individuals across the country file requests for environmental information.
Statement by Gretchen Gehrke, EDGI co-founder and program lead:
Without urgent action, the public’s access to environmental information will continue to be eroded. This impacts all of us — especially communities overburdened by pollution — as the Trump administration conceals, deletes, and misconstrues information that is inconvenient for its agenda, stripping public access to data we need to make informed decisions, advocate for public health, and hold our government to account. To protect our environment and our health, we must protect our environmental right to know.
Statement by Chris Sellers, EDGI member and professor of history at Stony Brook University:
The ongoing decimation of federal data leaves Americans in the dark about how the mounting environmental crises of climate change and pollution affect their communities. It also conceals who is responsible for these crises and threatens our ability to more fully understand emerging environmental threats like PFAS. EDGI is devoted to tracking attacks on Americans’ right to environmental knowledge and to helping build a future with more accessible, democratic, and empowering environmental data and governance systems.
EDGI Resources:
- Blog series on the state of environmental protection
- Blog series on significant federal website changes
- FOIA state-by-state resource guides
- Report: Climate of Suppression
- Report: Burning Down the EPA
- Report: Cost of Cuts to Environmental Justice Grants
- Report: Even More Permission to Pollute
- Report: Political Gaslighting in EPA Communications
- Public comment resource guide and EDGI’s comments on the proposed Endangerment Finding reconsideration and WOTUS redefinition
CONTACT: EDGI’s environmental experts are available to answer media questions. Please contact Shannan Lenke Stoll (shannanlenke.stoll@envirodatagov.org) with any inquiries.