A reset for environmental justice

A CAP-AND-TRADE system to cut toxic air emissions; a bipartisan agreement to strengthen the Clean Air Act; a federal program to ease the unjust burden of pollution in minority communities: All this sounds like an environmental to-do-list for President-elect Joe Biden. But it’s actually a list of federal actions taken by the George H.W. Bush administration in the early 1990s.

Mustafa Santiago Ali joined the Environmental Protection Agency in 1992, during Bush’s tenure, as part of a program to get college students from minority communities more involved in environmental issues. Over his 24-year career with the EPA, Santiago Ali helped lead the agency’s environmental justice programs, working to undo the toxic burden of pollution in minority, Indigenous and poor communities.

Then, in 2017, the Trump administration upended the program, proposing to zero-out its budget. Santiago Ali left the agency. He’s