The Big Beautiful Lie

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While families across the country celebrated the 4th of July, the Republican Congress passed a new federal budget that makes one thing clear: polluters come before people. This bill isn’t subtle. It’s bold in its harm. It dismantles core environmental protections, strips power from frontline communities, and gives fossil fuel companies everything they’ve asked for at the cost of our clean air and water. 

The bill outlines a deliberate strategy to weaken oversight and our ability to hold polluters accountable, while accelerating the development of dirty energy and excluding people from decisions that impact their health, safety, and future—all the while we barrel towards irreversible damage to our climate and the planet.

Families Left Behind While Polluters Catch a Break

Despite what some headlines say, the Methane Emissions Reduction Program hasn’t been eliminated, but it’s been seriously weakened. One of its core pillars, the methane fee on polluters, has been delayed until 2034. And roughly $150 million meant to help communities and companies cut methane emissions? Slashed.

That means fewer resources to stop leaks. Less accountability. And more risk for families living near oil and gas operations.

The EPA’s methane standards—still intact for now—are the only meaningful oversight left. However, we know that Trump’s EPA has its sights set on rolling back those critical standards. This administration’s goal is to give polluters a free pass.

Real people are paying the price. In West Texas, kids still walk to school through invisible clouds of benzene and formaldehyde, breathing in poison without knowing why their lungs burn. The companies responsible? Still unlikely to face consequences.

This is about public health, justice, and who gets to breathe clean air. And it’s happening in communities across Texas, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and beyond.

It Fast-Tracks Pipelines, No Questions Asked 

The budget also allocates $10 million to assist fossil fuel companies in expediting the issuance of pipeline permits. It creates a fast lane for industry, one that skips environmental reviews and blocks local communities from raising objections.

In practical terms, this means a pipeline could be built under your town’s river or through your neighborhood with little notice and no public hearing. And when you try to challenge it in court, you may find the door has already been slammed shut.

In rural Pennsylvania, a community could wake up to find survey flags on their land, only to learn that construction is already approved, they have no say, and the law no longer gives them time to act. That’s what this budget allows: corporate convenience at the cost of public control.

It Cuts Off Communities Already on the Frontlines 

This budget eliminates climate justice programs and local grants that aim to control air pollution in neighborhoods already burdened with the heaviest pollution. These funds helped replace diesel buses with clean electric ones, install solar panels in public housing, and install air filters in schools near refineries and chemical plants.

Now, those programs are gone.

In Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, families hoped these dollars would bring some relief: fewer fumes at the playground, better ventilation in classrooms, maybe even cleaner transit for the kids. Instead, children will continue to breathe the same industrial chemicals on the way to school, because the federal government decided their health wasn’t worth the investment.

This isn’t just negligence. It’s a pattern of disinvestment, of disregard, and environmental racism.

It Slams the Brakes on Climate Solutions

Even as climate disasters become more severe and more frequent, this budget cuts funding for clean energy and resilience projects, eliminating tax credits and gutting support for decarbonization hubs.

Families trying to prepare for record heat or repeated power outages now have fewer options. In Houston, for example, a family planning to install rooftop solar to keep the lights on during blackouts and reduce their energy bills has lost any tax incentives previously available to them. This means they’ll have no choice but to stay connected to a volatile, dirty grid, paying more for power that’s less reliable, even as summer temperatures become unbearable.

Meanwhile, the jobs and local investment that those programs promised? They’re gone too. This budget hinders progress and ensures that the people who need climate solutions most are the last to receive them.

It Hides the Damage While It Happens

As if the pollution weren’t bad enough, the budget also guts greenhouse gas reporting and shortens the window for legal challenges. That means people may not even know they’re being exposed to harmful chemicals until it’s too late to stop it.

Imagine a community in New Mexico that begins to see flames on the horizon, emanating from a new site just beyond their town. But when they ask what’s in the air, there’s no data and no baseline monitoring. By the time a local organizer pieces together the risk, the legal deadline to challenge the project has already passed.

This is not an accident. It’s designed to protect polluters from accountability and keep the public in the dark.

It Puts Corporations in Charge of Their Own Oversight

One of the more outrageous shifts in this budget is the move toward “pay-to-play” environmental permitting. Under this system, companies can pay to fast-track project approvals and conduct their own reviews of environmental impacts.

You read that right. The same industries profiting from drilling, mining, and polluting are now allowed to judge the consequences of their own projects. Independent science is no longer required. Public comment can be limited. And communities will be left with the knowledge that the project near their water supply, farmland, or homes—like so many others—was never thoroughly evaluated or independently assessed.

In Alaska or Arizona, where new mining projects are being proposed near Indigenous lands, this could mean fewer answers about how these operations will impact drinking water, fishing rights, and public health. Residents will have fewer opportunities to speak up for their communities. It’s not just dangerous, it’s undemocratic.

Now Is the Time to Fight Back

This budget makes its priorities painfully clear: Polluters get more power and control while communities get all the risk and are then silenced throughout the process. The new budget doesn’t just roll back environmental rules; it’s essentially an attack on public health and our ability to protect it, and as is historically true, Black, Brown, Indigenous, low-income, and rural communities will bear the most burden. We all deserve better. 

This budget may be law, but it’s not the end of the story. We still have the power to raise our voices, tell the truth, and organize for change.