Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva says communities along the border are dealing with air and water pollution, water scarcity and lasting impacts of extractive industries.
In Arizona, 84% of residents live in a community with unhealthy air, according to the American Lung Association State of the Air 2025 report.
That’s why Grijalva, alongside Democratic representatives Rashida Tlaib from Michigan and Summer Lee from Pennsylvania, launched the People’s Environmental Justice Caucus.
“Environmental justice must be at the center of policymaking, not an afterthought,” Grijalva said at an event in Washington D.C. on Thursday.
The new congressional caucus will focus on advancing policies that address environmental harms impacting communities that are disproportionately affected by climate change.
It will also promote the Environmental Justice for All Act – a bill first introduced by the late Congressman Raul Grijalva in 2020, to develop a community-driven policy to address negative health effects of federal laws or programs on frontline communities.
The bill has been subsequently reintroduced three times in Congress.
“My dad, Congressman Raul Grijalva was a strong believer in the process that led to environmental justice for all. One driven by community, shaped on the frontlines and grounded in lived experience,” Grijalva said. “He gave us a blueprint of how to do this, right?”
The establishment of the caucus comes about a month after the Trump Administration repealed the landmark endangerment finding – an Obama-era ruling that determined greenhouse gas emissions could threaten public health and welfare under the Clean Air Act.
The policy legally obligated the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gasses and became the foundation for broader climate change policy in 2009.
Last week, Attorney General Kris Mayes joined a multi-state coalition in suing the Trump Administration for rescinding the ruling.
“The science behind the 2009 endangerment finding is real and grounded in rigorous research. It is abundantly clear that greenhouse gas pollution has fueled climate change in our state and across the entire planet,” Mayes said in a press release.