Pause and review environmental justice and Title VI actions
What the document says“Administration should pause and review all ongoing EJ and Title VI actions”
The chapter frames this as ensuring consistency with a forthcoming Supreme Court decision, and says elsewhere that enforcement and the distribution of grants should be based on neutral constitutional principles.
What the document actually says“Administration should pause and review all ongoing EJ and Title VI actions”
Pause this work and look at it again. It covers fairness cases.
Some EPA work looks at whether pollution falls harder on some communities. The book says that work should pause. It says a court ruling was coming.
Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing
2025-01-20 · 90 FR 8339
Executive Order 14151 of January 20, 2025 requires each agency head, within 60 days, to terminate to the maximum extent allowed by law all environmental justice offices and positions along with equity action plans, equity actions, initiatives and programs and equity-related grants or contracts, to give the Director of the Office of Management and Budget a list of every environmental justice position, committee, program, service, activity, budget and expenditure in existence on November 4, 2024, and to have the deputy agency head recommend actions aligning the agency's programs, regulations, guidance, enforcement activities, grants, consent orders and litigating positions with the order's policy. The inventory and the recommendation are a review of ongoing actions. The fit breaks down in that the order terminates rather than pauses, it runs to every agency rather than to the EPA, it does not mention Title VI or the pending Supreme Court decision the chapter ties the pause to, and it sets no point at which paused actions would resume.
The order gives each agency 60 days to end environmental justice offices, plans and grants. Each must list every such job and program and suggest more steps, which is a form of review. But the order ends this work rather than pausing it. It covers all agencies, not just the EPA. It never names Title VI or the court case the book ties the pause to.
8 agency rules
- Medicare Program; Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems for Acute Care Hospitals (IPPS) and the Long-Term Care Hospital Prospective Payment System and Policy Changes and Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 Rates; Changes to the FY 2025 IPPS Rates Due to Court Decision; Requirements for Quality Programs; and Other Policy Changes; Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: Electronic Prescribing, Real-Time Prescription Benefit and Electronic Prior AuthorizationHealth and Human Services Department, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of the Secretary · August 4, 2025
- Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise in Airport Concessions Program Implementation ModificationsTransportation Department · October 3, 2025
- Reissuance and Modification of Nationwide PermitsDefense Department, Engineers Corps · January 8, 2026
- Combating Gender Ideology in Foreign AssistanceState Department · January 27, 2026
- Combating Discriminatory Equity Ideology in Foreign Assistance RulesState Department · January 27, 2026
- Protecting Life in Foreign AssistanceState Department · January 27, 2026
- Medicare Program; Alternative Payment Model Updates and the Increasing Organ Transplant Access (IOTA) ModelHealth and Human Services Department, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services · June 1, 2026
- Disadvantaged Business Enterprise and Airport Concession Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program RevisionsTransportation Department, Office of the Secretary · September 25, 2026
Each of these names the order above in its own summary, preamble or filing. That is a fact about the document, not a finding that it carries out this proposal: it is one step further away than the order is, and what it does about the proposal is a reading nobody has made here.