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The throughline that activists are calling for is a moratorium, but the four-point plan only proves to them that their needs aren’t being heard. “We asked for a moratorium, and [Governor Sherrill]’s just recycling things that were already in the process in the State House anyway,” said Casey Palmer, South Jersey Progressive Democrats member who has been protesting a data center local to her in New Jersey’s Monroe Township. At one Monroe Township Council meeting, she recalled, the data centers were not even on the agenda, “but people still went and spoke anyway because they see through the lines.”

They founded RCSG in 2017, and now, nearly a decade later, they’ve built a space where returning citizens can transition back into their communities. RCSG is both a resource-sharing organization and a union that advocates for humane conditions and rights for people who are incarcerated, having successfully advocated for several new laws under former Governor Phil Murphy, including restoring voting rights to people on probation and parole and allowing former felons to serve on juries.

In July 2025, multiple federal agencies revoked longstanding regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act, eliminating all requirements to consider environmental justice and cumulative impacts during federal environmental reviews. With those protections weakened, and with the state maintaining that municipalities play no formal role in environmental justice compliance, the burden falls on volunteer organizers and underfunded community groups—the same organizations that have just lost their federal grants. 

The scale of the financial retreat is staggering. In March 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency canceled more than 400 grants totaling $1.7 billion—funding earmarked for air and water quality improvements in disadvantaged communities. By October, the Department of Energy terminated $7.56 billion in awards to 223 clean energy projects across 16 states that voted Democratic in 2024; New Jersey and Delaware alone stood to lose approximately $43.5 million. 

A quiet Sunday unfolds in a meditation on home, empathy, and mutual aid. Through time with family and a prayer service at Delaney Hall, Halashon Sianipar and his kids realize community in simple acts of care.

The bill aims to bring in funds from fossil-fuel extraction or refining companies that the NJ Department of Environmental Protection estimates to have caused over one billion metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions from 1995–2024. The legislation also requires that 51 percent of those funds benefit overburdened communities, of which 5.2 million people reside. The money will be kept in a dedicated fund to be distributed in grants to municipalities.