AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show with President Trump’s moves to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights. On Thursday, 168 workers of the environmental justice office were placed on leave. The office was first established in 1992 after research showed communities with hazardous waste sites had a higher percentage of Black and low-income residents.

For more, we’re joined in Washington, D.C., by Mustafa Santiago Ali, the former head of the EPA’s environmental justice program. He resigned in 2017 to protest a Trump administration proposal to severely scale back the agency.

So, you resigned under Trump administration one. Now it’s not scaling back; it’s shutting it down. Can you talk first about what environmental justice is, and what it will mean?

MUSTAFA ALI: Yeah. Well, environmental justice deals with the disproportionate impacts that happen in communities of color and lower-wealth communities. Those communities are everywhere from Appalachia to Flint, Michigan, to the Navajo Nation. It makes sure that folks have a voice, makes sure that they have an opportunity to play a role in the impacts that are happening in their communities. It also helps them to be able to play a role in moving from surviving to thriving.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, you have 168, some people are saying 200, workers within the environmental justice program put on leave. So, what happens to communities across the country?

MUSTAFA ALI: Well, they’re now placed in a much dangerous situation because they no longer have that advocate for them inside of the Environmental Protection Agency. You know, we have over 100 million people in our country right now who are dealing with unsafe air, whether it’s from ozone particulate matter or a number of other things. And many times, our most vulnerable communities are the ones who are carrying those burdens. So they no longer have someone to make sure that they have the information that they need and that they have the ability to work with the agency and others to address that.

We know that we’ve got all these dangerous chemicals that are in our waters right now, everything from lead — and we saw what happened in Flint, Michigan, in Benton Harbor, in a number of other locations across our country. But we also have things like TCE and “forever chemicals” and a number of other things that are just very deadly. So, they no longer have someone, a place to be able to go, to understand how to navigate these very dangerous situations that they’re often facing. They also no longer will have the resources that are necessary to help their groups to be able to properly advocate, to help to make change happen inside of their communities.

AMY GOODMAN: The Guardian has an article headlined “Trump’s proposed EPA leadership stacked with lobbyists and attorneys.” What concerns you most about the EPA right now? And what message do you have? Right now hundreds of EPA career workers have left. ProPublica reports those who remain feel deeply torn. You quit under the first Trump administration. What message do you have for those who are remaining?

MUSTAFA ALI: Well, first, I’m very concerned about the deregulation and the focus on corporate profits, because any time that we place profit over people, then we are putting a crosshair on our most vulnerable, our most marginalized.

For all those brothers and sisters who are still there at the agency and for those who have been put on leave, I would give them the words of my grandmother: that you have power unless you give it away. And that means that not only them, but citizens across our country who believe that everyone has the right to have clean air and clean water, for their children to be able to be on land that is free from toxic pollution, that we have to raise our voices. We have to get engaged. We have to make sure that folks understand that this is not an American value, and that we also have to understand that there is power inside of our vote. I never tell anyone who to vote for, but I do say you should be thinking very clearly about voting for somebody who cares about your communities. So don’t give up your power. Continue to build relationships together, and stand in solidarity.

AMY GOODMAN: Last week, the Senate confirmed former Long Island Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin as head of the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency. Three Democrats joined with the Republicans in the vote: Arizona Senators Rubén Gallego and Mark Kelly, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman. The youth climate action group Sunrise Movement condemned Zeldin’s confirmation as a disaster for the planet and a win for fossil fuel executives, writing, quote, “He took $420K from Big Oil, pledged to undo climate protections, and has been all-in with Trump, backing corporate polluters at the expense of working people.” In this last minute that we have together, Mustafa, where do you see this country going right now? You just stood with other climate activists outside protesting. What is your ultimate demand?

MUSTAFA ALI: Well, our ultimate demand is to stop placing these crosshairs on vulnerable communities and communities across our country. We should be focused on making sure that folks’ health is being improved and not having a situation where folks are going to be sicker. Their actions also will make us poorer, because we know that the focus for the 21st century has to be on a cleaner economy. So, once again, we have the opportunity to move people from surviving to thriving, but the current sets of actions that they’re moving forward on are going to do absolutely the opposite.

AMY GOODMAN: Mustafa Santiago Ali, we thank you so much for being with us, former head of the environmental justice program at the Environmental Protection Agency. It is now in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. A hundred sixty-eight workers, at least, have been put on leave. He is now the executive vice president of the National Wildlife Federation.

That does it for our show. Democracy Now! produced with Mike Burke, Renée Feltz, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud, Hana Elias. Our executive director is Julie Crosby. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.