Racial Injustice in Environment Policy Becomes White House Focus

President-elect Joe Biden has signaled he wants to power up a small White House office, transforming the Council on Environmental Quality into a muscular policy shop to help move his environmental justice agenda.

Under President Donald Trump, CEQ was focused largely on speeding up environmental permitting under the Nixon-era National Environmental Policy Act, revising the statute’s decades-old rules in order to boost infrastructure and energy projects.

But Biden has said that, under his watch, the council—which sits within the Executive Office of the President—will become a kind of central clearinghouse for environmental justice policy, pulling together agencies across the federal ...