President Donald Trump is driving climate change activists up the wall by announcing a brand new executive order that will bring the current push for paper straws to an end.
In November of 2024, former President Joe Biden put forward a new national strategy to combat pollution allegedly caused by plastic. He was very gung-ho about policies and efforts that were designed to help reduce the use of plastic, which included plastic straws and shifting to different kinds of material that wouldn’t be harmful to the environment.
“I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don’t work,” President Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “BACK TO PLASTIC!”
During the first Trump administration, plastic straws were available for purchase, as they were during the 2020 election cycle. In fact, Trump himself made red plastic straws with his name on them, offering them to the general public as an alternative to the “liberal” paper straws.
“Liberal paper straws don’t work,” Trump’s site informed visitors in 2019. “Stand with President Trump and buy your recyclable straws today.”
Biden pushed forward his plastic agenda through the Environmental Protection Agency. President Trump, however, is far more friendly toward companies that produce plastics. He has been an outspoken critic of the progressive left’s Green New Deal, which contained several policy positions that were to be pushed through the legislature.
During his first term in the White House, Trump rolled back several of former President Barack Obama’s measures regarding plastic waste and promoted alternatives.
In a move to save taxpayer-funded cash, Trump is said to have placed 160 environmental justice workers on paid leave Thursday. Around 300 other federal employees work at the EPA division.
This goes hand-in-hand with the administration’s offer to the majority of the three million government workers to resign from their positions. Workers were offered two options: accept a buyout and have their salary through September, or stay in the current position but start working back in the office.
Staying could result in the employee being laid off, and the buyout offer was paused by a federal judge on Thursday.
Trump and his team currently consider many environmental programs to be part of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, which his administration has dropped the hammer on lately.
On January 27, acting director of the OMB, Matthew Vaeth, put out a memo called “Temporary Pause of Agency, Grant, Loan and Other Financial Assistance Programs,” which led to a requirement for all federal agencies to pause “all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by [President Donald Trump‘s] executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”
