In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland and the EPA administrator, Michael Regan, announced a “series of actions” that include a brand-new Office of Environmental Justice as well as an “enforcement strategy” that will guide the DOJ’s work.

Garland said both federal agencies are taking action because “communities of color, indigenous communities, and low-income communities often bear the brunt of the harm caused by environmental crime, pollution, and climate change.”

Reacting to the new initiative, James Taylor of The Heartland Institute says Republicans and “sane” Democrats must recognize this push for “environmental justice” as nothing more than a “trojan horse” for far-left Democrats to impose more Socialist policies on the American public.

“And by putting the environmental justice label on it,” Taylor tells AFN, “they seek to appeal to everybody who cares about the environment. But caring about the environment is being good stewards of the environment, not imposing a far-left ideology on environmental issues.”

Steve Milloy, founder of the website Junk Science, calls the DOJ-EPA effort an “environmental justice hoax” because there is no evidence poor Americans are the victims of a blatant and dangerous pollution. And none other than the EPA, he says, exists to monitor and enforce those environmental standards in communities rich and poor.

If you ask Milloy, the problems of poor minority communities can be summed up in one word: poverty. That is because, he says, government regulations keep good-paying jobs out of poor communities that need them.

“If the Biden administration really wanted to help poor communities right now,” he tells AFN, “it would unleash the American energy industry to tame energy prices and inflation.”