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Canary in a Coal Mine’: Data Scientists Restore a Climate Justice Tool Taken Down by Trump

Summary

The Trump administration has removed the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), a key resource used to identify disadvantaged communities for environmental justice funding. Within 48 hours, data scientists from the Public Environmental Data Project restored a functional version of the tool on an independent website. CEJST was developed under the Biden administration to allocate 40% of federal climate and clean energy investments to underserved communities. Its removal raises concerns about transparency and equitable funding distribution. Experts fear more critical climate datasets could disappear under Trump’s leadership, making it harder for policymakers and the public to address environmental justice issues. Scientists and advocates are now working to archive other at-risk federal datasets before they are deleted.

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