Once again this month we witnessed an eerily orange sun, air so toxic that doctors warned us to stay inside at all costs, and a worsening climate crisis. And rather than take meaningful steps to stop the destructive path we’re on, the Trump regime is adding fuel to the fire—no pun intended. This summer, the Trump administration attacked the Roadless Rule, gutted the Endangered Species Act, and stripped protections from national monuments. This is not a coincidence. It is a coordinated assault on everything that belongs to all of us.
We cannot merely talk about how to stop this assault, we must walk the walk. Here’s how Earthjustice is fighting back to protect our climate for ourselves and our children–and how you can join the fight. Let’s Address This.
What Happened in One Week
If you’ve followed my human rights advocacy for any period of time, you know that I have written extensively about the Roadless Area Conservation Rule—the landmark 2001 conservation policy that protects roughly 45 million acres of national forest lands from logging, road construction, and industrial extraction.
Under this Trump administration, the threat to these protected lands has accelerated dramatically, and deliberately. Take a look at the devastation on display in just one week last month:
July 10: The administration cut habitat protections for endangered species nationwide—reversing a 50-year safeguard that shielded vital wildlife habitat from destruction.
July 13: Shrunk Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by over 90%—revoking protections for sacred sites, ancient cultural resources, and irreplaceable ecosystems that belong to all Americans and to the Tribal nations who have fought for decades to protect them.
July 14: Proposed handing over management of imperiled grizzly bears to states that have long been openly hostile to their legal protections.
July 17: Announced two additional rules attacking the Endangered Species Act—rules designed to make it easier to destroy the habitats of vulnerable plants and animals in the name of profit.
And as a throughline, the ongoing campaign to obliterate the Roadless Rule entirely—reopening 45 million acres of our wildest national forests to logging, mining, and industrial development.
This is not a series of unrelated policy decisions. This is a coordinated strategy to hand America’s public lands to wealthy corporations. Understand this fact—once old-growth forests are cut down, they do not return in our lifetimes. The damage is effectively permanent. And right now, that damage is expanding quickly. Here’s a snapshot.
The Roadless Rule, Endangered Species Act, and National Monuments—All Face Destruction If We Don’t Act
As data centers further poison our water, the Roadless Rule protects watersheds that save Americans tens of billions in water treatment costs annually, support more than 300 species of conservation concern, and include irreplaceable places like Alaska’s Tongass—the largest intact temperate rainforest on Earth. Without the Roadless Rule, we will see tremendous risks tothe headwaters feeding our rivers, the old-growth trees storing carbon for centuries, and the habitat corridors that grizzly bears, wolves, elk, salmon, and trout depend on to survive.
Likewise, The Endangered Species Act has spent 50 years saving the bald eagle, the gray wolf, the American alligator. Meanwhile, the Trump administration just finalized a rule redefining “harm” in ways that greenlight the destruction of imperiled wildlife habitat for drilling and mining. Corporations can now legally eliminate the places animals need to live while the paperwork stays clean. Extinction is forever—there is no walking it back.
And finally, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante—living archives of ancient cultural resources and sacred Tribal sites—are now targeted for illegal shrinkage to 8.9% and 9.7% of their current size respectively. Why? For fossil fuel extraction. This is in direct violation of the Antiquities Act.
Across all of it, 99% of citizen input across the political spectrum opposes these destructions. Red or blue, the public has spoken against this environmental destruction. The administration is not listening—so we need to make them listen. This is where you and Earthjustice come in.
Earthjustice Is Fighting Back. They Need Your Support.
For over 25 years, Earthjustice has been a powerful legal force standing between corporate extraction and America’s public lands. They fight for the people, the planet, and animals—for free. They have successfully defended the Roadless Rule before. They challenged the first Trump administration’s dismantling of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. And earlier this year, they won a 7 year legal battle against the first Trump administration’s attack on the Endangered Species Act.
They are in court right now. And they need resources to fight the growing scale of Trump’s attacks.
This includes protecting the Roadless Rule, the Endangered Species Act, and our precious national monuments. But none of this happens without our support. Court battles take time, legal expertise, and sustained resources. Every dollar donated to Earthjustice goes directly toward that fight—on behalf of every American who has ever drunk clean water from a forest watershed, hiked a trail in protected backcountry, or simply believed that some things should not be for sale.
Our public forests belong to all of us. Our wildlife belongs to all of us. Our national monuments belong to all of us—and to the Tribal nations whose cultural heritage they hold. Protecting them is not a partisan position. It is the bare minimum we owe to the next generation.
And in addition to donating, share this article, tag @Earthjustice now to help spread the world. Success requires all of us.
Conclusion
Finally, understand this. I know we are all exhausted. The administration is counting on public fatigue. It is counting on the sheer volume of attacks to overwhelm our capacity to respond to any of them.
Disappoint them.
Support Earthjustice. Make your voice heard. And remember that the public lands under attack right now—the forests, the monuments, the habitats, the watersheds—exist because previous generations chose preservation over exploitation. They understood that some things are too precious to sell.
We must understand that today. And we must fight like hell to protect them.
Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This—a platform dedicated to human rights, environmental justice, and the accountability that corporate media refuses to deliver. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union.
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We’re wasting so much time while he dismantles the NOAA, reverses climate protections, and undermines science at every turn. This is the most urgent crisis of our time. Nothing else will matter—economy, healthcare, education, any of it—without a habitable planet.
I have contributed to Earthjustice for many years. They are an excellent organization and get important results. For example, in the last few days their representation of native American groups before the Michigan Supreme Court resulted in the court rescinding the permit to construct the underwater pipeline for the Keystone XL project.