As Washington weakens environmental protections, Trenton takes apart New Jersey’s own safeguards.

Donald Trump has declared war on environmental protections from Washington, but in New Jersey, the problem isn’t just what Trump is doing. The problem is what New Jersey is doing that allows those attacks to have an impact here at home.

The Trump administration isn’t simply rolling back a few regulations around the edges. It is carrying out the largest dismantling of environmental protections and standards in American history. The cumulative effect isn’t one bad policy. It’s more than 530 administrative actions, a death by a thousand cuts.

For New Jersey, these aren’t abstract policy debates. They translate into dirtier air, more flooding, stalled toxic cleanups, higher utility bills, and greater public health risks.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill can go on cable television and criticize Donald Trump all she wants. She can refuse to hand over voter rolls and denounce attacks on democracy. But if New Jersey weakens its own environmental protections, cuts DEP funding, fast-tracks permits, raids clean energy funds, and delays climate rules, then we aren’t building a wall against Trump. We’re building an on-ramp.

You can’t fight Trump with one hand while handing his agenda a permit with the other.

For decades, New Jersey’s environmental laws acted as a shield against federal rollbacks. We had stronger wetlands protections, stricter flood regulations, and a DEP that wasn’t afraid to tell polluters, “No.” Today, that shield is developing more holes than the Pulaski Skyway.

Trump is swinging a wrecking ball at environmental protections nationally. The question is: Why is New Jersey helping carry it?

Operation FAST: DEP or drive-thru?

Gov. Sherrill’s Executive Order 5, “Operation FAST,” is being sold as government efficiency. In reality, it puts environmental protection on a stopwatch.

The permitting dashboard and “permit czar” impose mandatory timelines on state agencies, particularly the DEP, forcing staff to process permits at record speed.

They’ve turned the Department of Environmental Protection into the Department of Excessive Pollution.

When you limit public input and scientific review, you’re not cutting red tape. You’re cutting public health and safety. Toxic contamination, wetlands destruction, flooding impacts, and pipeline hazards don’t operate on political timelines.

Scientists don’t find pollution or health problems faster because politicians are impatient.

New Jersey already has more Superfund sites than any other state in the nation. We should be hiring inspectors, scientists, and enforcement staff, not asking them to review complex permits like contestants on a game show.

At this rate, DEP’s new motto may as well be: “Would you like a pipeline with that permit?”

Breaking open the piggy bank

For years, politicians have treated environmental funds like an ATM. The Clean Energy Fund and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, were created to fight climate change, not to plug holes in state budgets.

Raiding $190 million from clean energy programs and hundreds of millions more from RGGI plays directly into Trump’s hands.

That money was supposed to lower utility bills, expand renewable energy, and help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change. Instead, it is being used to balance budgets, a political choice that deepens both the climate crisis and the leadership crisis.

It’s the political equivalent of selling your fire extinguisher to pay your electric bill while your kitchen is on fire.

The reactionary energy response

New Jersey should be leading the transition to renewable energy. Instead, we’re hearing an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy that sounds suspiciously like “everything except moving quickly on renewables.”

The Power NJ Act lifted New Jersey’s 50-year moratorium on new nuclear plants while gas plant expansions continue receiving support.

This isn’t an energy transition. It’s an energy regression.

Natural gas plants lock us into decades of emissions. Nuclear leaves behind radioactive waste that will outlive every politician currently in office. Yet somehow we’re told this is “clean” and “innovative.”

Apparently, every bad energy idea becomes acceptable if you attach the words “data center” to it.

New Jersey’s biggest problem: The holes we never fixed

The dirty little secret is that Trump’s environmental rollbacks are having an impact in New Jersey because we never fixed the damage done years ago.

New Jersey still hasn’t repaired or strengthened many of the Christie administration’s rollbacks to flood hazard rules, stream encroachment protections, wetlands regulations, Category One buffers, water quality planning, headwaters protections, and ecological connectivity standards.

Climate change doesn’t care whether a loophole was created by Christie, Trump, or anyone else. Floodwater doesn’t stop at party lines.

Every loophole in state law becomes an open invitation for federal rollbacks.

Those gaps aren’t theoretical. They affect decisions being made right now, including whether New Jersey adopts stronger climate standards for future development.

Climate rules delayed when we need them most

The REAL (Resilient Environments and Landscapes) rules were designed to make New Jersey climate-ready by requiring developers to account for future flooding and sea-level rise.

The rules would:

• Require the use of current climate science instead of outdated FEMA maps.
• Mandate higher flood elevation standards.
• Reduce future flood losses.
• Better protect communities from sea-level rise and extreme weather.

Instead, implementation has been delayed until 2027.

Environmental protection delayed is environmental protection denied.

We’re telling people whose basements have flooded three times in five years that they’ll have to wait while developers finish building tomorrow’s flood victims.

Climate change isn’t taking a year off. Why are we?

What New Jersey doesn’t have

New Jersey’s environmental laws were built on the assumption there would always be a federal floor.

That floor is disappearing. If the state truly wants to protect itself from Trump’s environmental agenda, it can no longer pretend its existing laws are enough.

While the federal government argues it no longer has an obligation to regulate climate pollution under the Clean Air Act, New Jersey has largely relied on the EPA to do the heavy lifting.

That means New Jersey has:

• No enforceable CO₂ limits.
• No methane regulations.
• No mandatory greenhouse gas reductions for major polluters.
• No comprehensive state climate regulatory program.

Unlike California, New York, Oregon, Washington, and Massachusetts, New Jersey lacks several critical protections:

• A state Environmental Quality Act (“mini-NEPA”) requiring environmental impact statements for major projects.
• An Environmental Backstop Act that automatically preserves stronger federal standards when Washington rolls them back.
• Strong methane and carbon dioxide regulations independent of federal standards.
• Comprehensive habitat protections under the Endangered and Nongame Species Conservation Act.
• A meaningful Climate Superfund law to make polluters pay.
• Stronger environmental justice protections without loopholes.
• Updated PFAS and toxic chemical standards that automatically keep pace with science.

New Jersey’s Environmental Justice law has loopholes big enough to drive a garbage truck through. It cannot directly deny many permits, and public hearings have limited legal effect.

Our Endangered Species law protects animals but not necessarily the habitats they need to survive.

That’s like protecting birds while cutting down all the trees.

Other states are fighting back

While New Jersey has done little to build a firewall against Trump’s environmental agenda, other states already have.

Oregon passed an Environmental Protection Act that freezes federal environmental standards at pre-Trump levels. If Washington weakens protections, Oregon simply says, “Not here.”

California and New York have state environmental review laws that can stop or delay projects regardless of what happens in Washington.

Washington maintains independent carbon caps.

Massachusetts and California have led lawsuits against the EPA and the Trump administration over environmental rollbacks.

Meanwhile, New Jersey continues challenging Trump on other issues while largely ignoring his attacks on the environment.

At some point, the Garden State risks becoming the Paved-Over State.

The federal threat we cannot ignore

Some threats New Jersey cannot stop on their own.

Trump’s cuts to EPA funding hit us particularly hard because a significant portion of DEP’s budget comes from federal dollars.

Federal Superfund cuts threaten cleanup projects on the Passaic River, Berry’s Creek, and dozens of other toxic sites.

Federal offshore wind and offshore drilling decisions affect projects in federal waters.

Pollution from Ohio and Pennsylvania still blows into New Jersey regardless of our laws.

And when the federal government weakens protections for endangered species crossing state lines, New Jersey cannot put a fence around the Delaware Bay.

But that’s exactly why state protections matter.

What New Jersey should do

If New Jersey wants to build a real firewall against Trump’s environmental agenda, it should:

1. Pass an Environmental Backstop Act modeled after Oregon.
2. Adopt a state Environmental Quality Review Act requiring environmental impact statements.
3. Pass climate legislation with strong, enforceable standards.
4. Adopt the REAL rules immediately and strengthen flood protections.
5. Restore and strengthen Christie-era environmental protections.
6. Strengthen methane, greenhouse gas, and climate regulations.
7. Expand endangered species protections to include habitat, breeding, and foraging areas.
8. Eliminate loopholes in the Environmental Justice law.
9. Fully fund the DEP and hire additional scientists, inspectors, and enforcement staff.
10. Stop treating environmental funds like a political slush fund.
11. Update standards for toxic chemicals like PFAS and accelerate toxic site cleanups.
12. Pass a Climate Superfund law.

Donald Trump is dismantling environmental protections at the federal level. That’s bad enough.

What’s worse is voluntarily dismantling them ourselves.

New Jersey spent decades building some of the strongest environmental protections in the country. At the very moment Washington is retreating from environmental responsibility, Trenton should be strengthening that legacy, not weakening it.

You can’t call yourself the Garden State while allowing it to become a polluted wasteland.

If we continue down this road, we won’t become the Garden State. We’ll become Texas on the Hudson.

Or worse, we’ll be Florida with worse traffic and more flooding.

Our elected leaders have a choice: They can strengthen New Jersey’s environmental protections before federal safeguards disappear, or become complicit through inaction.

History won’t remember the strongest press releases. It will remember who stood up and fought.