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Geoff Nolan, Earthjustice, 202-740-7030, gnolan@earthjustice.org
WASHINGTON - Today, 175 environmental, environmental justice, civil rights, and allied organizations sent a letter to House Natural Resources Committee Chair Raul M. Grijalva (D-AZ) and Ranking Member Bruce Westerman (R-AR) in support of H.R. 2021, the Environmental Justice for All Act. The bill includes bold policies that will strengthen the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to require federal agencies to consider the cumulative and disproportionate impacts of pollution on communities of color and those of low-income. It would also enable residents and groups to hold polluters accountable in court for projects that use federal funds and engage in environmental discrimination. Additionally, the bill would use new fees on oil, gas, and coal companies to fund investments in environmental justice communities.
"Centered on the simple premise that everyone has the right to drink clean water, breathe clean air, and live without fear of the poisonous effects of toxic chemicals, the Environmental Justice for All Act and the process used to create it, stand as an example to follow and significant step to end environmental racism," the letter reads. "Setting strong new norms, it makes significant investments to limit and clean up the toxic pollution that has plagued environmental justice communities for decades. Concurrently, it invests in the same communities so that they have equitable access to emerging resources and technologies that should be equitably available to them as our nation recommits itself to addressing our health, safety, and the climate crisis."
Environmental justice communities continue to face disproportionate levels of exposure to toxic pollution and environmental health harms. The provisions of this bill would begin to address longstanding health and environmental risks and allow individuals and communities to hold those responsible accountable.
"Those in power can no longer feign ignorance to the concerns and experiences of those who have borne the brunt of exposure to the highest levels of pollution in the country," said Earthjustice Healthy Communities Legislative Director Raul Garcia. "As environmental concerns worsen alongside the climate crisis, urgent action is needed to address past injustices and those of the future. Thank you Rep. Grijalva and Rep. McEachin for inclusively listening to the needs and concerns of environmental justice communities and turning that feedback into policy."
175 groups signed the letter, including the Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice, and Health and Alaska Community Action on Toxics.
"Too many frontline and fenceline communities have been impacted by environmental injustice from climate injustice, energy injustice, food injustice, transportation injustice to water injustice," said Dr. Sacoby Wilson, Director, Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health (CEEH). "It is time that everyone in the United States has access to clean air, clean water, safe food, healthy housing, equitable transit. Passage of the EJ for All Act will be a major step in addressing decades of environmental racism, decades of Jim Crow environmental policies, decades of extraction from the Earth and her peoples, and decades of inaction to the suffering of those communities facing toxic trauma."
"We are tired of empty promises and want meaningful and urgent action to prevent further harm to our communities who are suffering from toxic exposures that have resulted in a tremendous burden of cancers, damage to our children's developing brains, birth defects, and reproductive disorders," said Vi Waghiyi, Environmental Health and Justice Program Director with Alaska Community Action on Toxics and Native Village of Savoonga Tribal Member. "We are also experiencing the devastating and interconnected effects of the climate crisis. We support H.R. 2021, the Environmental Justice for All Act, and appreciate the work of Rep. Grijalva and Rep. McEachin for hearing our pleas and taking action to address them."
Click here to read the full letter.
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
800-584-6460The move comes amid the president's military occupation of the nation's capital, despite an official drop in violent crime.
He didn't like the latest jobs numbers, so he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and tapped a notorious yes-man to replace her.
He doesn't like "woke" history, so he ordered federal agencies and institutions to whitewash official accounts of the nation's troubled past.
Now US President Donald Trump's Department of Justice is investigating whether police officials in Washington, DC manipulated crime data as the president, a proven prolific liar, tries to justify his federal takeover of a city where violent crime is officially at historic lows.
"DC gave Fake Crime numbers in order to create a false illusion of safety. This is a very bad and dangerous thing to do, and they are under serious investigation for so doing!" Trump wrote Tuesday on his Truth Social network. "Until four days ago, Washington, DC was the most unsafe 'city' in the United States, and perhaps the World. Now, in just a short period of time, it is perhaps the safest, and getting better every single hour! People are flocking to DC again, and soon, the beautification will begin!"
According to Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Report data from 2024, Trump's statement wildly diverges from reality, as 28 cities had higher violent crime rates than Washington, DC.
Now, the same US Attorney's office that just this April lauded the drop in crime in the capital is probing the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) amid pushback against Trump's federalization of the force and deployment of National Guard troops from five jurisdictions and other federal agents onto the streets of the city. The DOJ criminal probe will be led by the office of US Attorney Jeanine Pirro.
There have been multiple internal allegations that MPD manipulated crime data. In 2020, former MPD Sergeant Charlotte Djossou filed a lawsuit alleging that senior department officials routinely misclassified more serious crimes to artificially reduce their reported rate. The DC Police Union, led by Gregg Pemberton, has also accused MPD supervisors of ordering officers to downgrade violent crimes to lesser offenses.
Last month, MPD suspended Michael Pulliam, a senior officer who allegedly altered crime statistics in his district. However, Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, told The Washington Post Tuesday that MPD Chief Pamela Smith had investigated all seven of the city's police districts for possible crime data manipulation and found problems only in Pulliam's jurisdiction.
"We are not experiencing a spike in crime," Bowser insisted in a recent interview with MSNBC. "In fact, we're watching our crime numbers go down."
"The children wept, as no parents were there to share the moment—their parents had been killed by the Israeli army," said one observer.
More than 1,000 Palestinian children orphaned by Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza took part in a bittersweet graduation ceremony Monday at a special school in the south of the embattled enclave as Israeli forces continued their US-backed campaign of annihilation and ethnic cleansing nearby.
Dressed in caps and gowns and waving Palestinian flags, graduates of the school at al-Wafa Orphan Village in Khan Younis—opened earlier this year by speech pathologist Wafaa Abu Jalala—received diplomas as students and staff proudly looked on. It was a remarkable event given the tremendous suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, especially the children, and Israel's obliteration of the strip's educational infrastructure, often referred to as scholasticide.
Organizers said the event was the largest of its kind since Israel began leveling Gaza after the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Israel's assault and siege, which are the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case, have left more than 62,000 Palestinians dead, including over 18,500 children—official death tolls that are likely to be a severe undercount.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reported in April that nearly 40,000 children in Gaza have lost one or both of their parents to Israeli bombs and bullets in what the agency called the world's "largest orphan crisis" in modern history. Other independent groups say the number of orphans is even higher during a war in which medical professionals have coined a grim new acronym: WCNSF—wounded child, no surviving family.
Hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians are starving in what Amnesty International on Monday called a "deliberate campaign." Thousands of Gazan children are treated for malnutrition each month, and at least 122 have starved to death, according to local officials.
Early in the war, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) called Gaza "the world's most dangerous place to be a child." Last year, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called "List of Shame" of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts. Doctors and others including volunteers from the United States have documented many cases in which they've concluded Israeli snipers and other troops have deliberately shot children in the head and chest.
Palestinian children take part in a graduation ceremony at al-Wafa Orphan Village in Khan Younis, Gaza on August 18, 2025. (Photo: Abdallah Alattar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
There are also more child amputees in Gaza than anywhere else in the world, with UN agencies estimating earlier this year that 3,000-4,000 Palestinian children have had one or more limbs removed, sometimes without anesthesia. The administration of US President Donald Trump—which provides Israel with many of the weapons used to kill and maim Palestinian children—recently stopped issuing visas to amputees and other victims seeking medical treatment in the United States.
All of the above have wrought what one Gaza mother called the "complete psychological destruction" of children in the embattled enclave.
Indeed, a 2024 survey of more than 500 Palestinian children in Gaza revealed that 96% of them fear imminent death, 92% are not accepting of reality, 79% suffer from nightmares, 77% avoid discussing traumatic events, 73% display signs of aggression, 49% wish to die because of the war, and many more "show signs of withdrawal and severe anxiety, alongside a pervasive sense of hopelessness."
Iain Overton, executive director of the UK-based group Action on Armed Violence, said at the time of the survey's publication that "the world's failure to protect Gaza's children is a moral failing on a monumental scale."
"No state should be above the law," said Younis Alkhatib of the Palestine Red Crescent Society. "The international community is obliged to protect humanitarians and to stop impunity."
The United Nations humanitarian affairs office said Tuesday that the new record of 383 aid workers killed last year while performing their lifesaving jobs was "shocking"—but considering Israel's relentless attacks on civilians, medical staff, journalists, and relief workers in Gaza, it was no surprise that the bombardment of the enclave was a major driver of the rise in aid worker deaths in 2024.
Nearly half of the aid workers killed last year—181 of them—were killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza, while 60 died in Sudan amid the civil war there.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded a 31% increase in aid worker killings compared to 2023, the agency said as it marked World Humanitarian Day.
"Even one attack against a humanitarian colleague is an attack on all of us and on the people we serve," said Tom Fletcher, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs. "Attacks on this scale, with zero accountability, are a shameful indictment of international inaction and apathy."
Israel and its top allies, including the United States, have persisted in claiming it is targeting Hamas in its attacks on Gaza, which have killed more than 62,000 people—likely a significant undercount by the Gaza Health Ministry. It has also repeatedly claimed that its attacks on aid workers and other people protected under international law were "accidental."
"Every attack is a grave betrayal of humanity, and the rules designed to protect them and the communities they serve. Each killing sends a dangerous message that their lives were expendable. They were not."
"As the humanitarian community, we demand—again—that those with power and influence act for humanity, protect civilians and aid workers, and hold perpetrators to account," said Fletcher.
The UN Security Council adopted a resolution in May 2024 reaffirming that humanitarian staff must be protected in conflict zones—a month after the Israel Defense Forces struck a convoy including seven workers from the US-based charity World Central Kitchen, killing all of them.
More than a year later, said OCHA, "the lack of accountability remains pervasive."
The UN-backed Aid Worker Security Database's provisional numbers for 2025 so far show that at least 265 aid workers have been killed this year, with one of the deadliest attacks perpetrated by the IDF against medics and emergency responders in clearly marked vehicles in Gaza. Eight of the workers were with the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which on Tuesday noted that "Palestinian humanitarian workers have been deliberately targeted more than anywhere else."
"No state should be above the law," said Younis Alkhatib, president of the humanitarian group. "The international community is obliged to protect humanitarians and to stop impunity."
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said Tuesday that humanitarian workers around the world "are the last lifeline for over 300 million people" living in conflict and disaster zones.
What is missing as advocates demand protection for aid workers and as "red lines are crossed with impunity," said Guterres, is "political will—and moral courage."
"Humanitarians must be respected and protected," he said. "They can never be targeted."
Olga Cherevko of OCHA emphasized that despite Israel's continued bombardment of Gaza's healthcare systemsystem and its attacks at aid hubs, humanitarian workers continue their efforts to save lives "day in and day out."
"I think as a humanitarian, I feel powerless sometimes in Gaza because I know what it is that we can do as humanitarians when we're enabled to do so, both here in Gaza and in any other humanitarian crisis," said Cherevko. "We continue to face massive impediments for delivering aid at scale, when our missions are delayed, when our missions lasted 12, 14, 18 hours; the routes that we're given are dangerous, impassible, or inaccessible."
Israel has blocked the United Nations and other established aid agencies that have worked for years in the occupied Palestinian territories from delivering lifesaving aid in recent months, pushing the entire enclave towards famine.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) added in a statement that "our colleagues continue to show up not because they are fearless, but because the suffering is too urgent to ignore. Yet, courage is not protection, and dedication does not deflect bullets."
"The rules of war are clear: Humanitarian personnel must be respected and protected," said the ICRC. "Every attack is a grave betrayal of humanity, and the rules designed to protect them and the communities they serve. Each killing sends a dangerous message that their lives were expendable. They were not."
Along with the aid workers who were killed worldwide last year, 308 were injured, 125 were kidnapped, and 45 were detained for their work.
"Violence against aid workers is not inevitable," said Fletcher. "It must end."