Milwaukee church saw opportunity to plant trees on empty land. Trump team saw DEI effort.

Yahoo

03-04-2025

This spring, Solomon Community Temple United Methodist Church in Milwaukee's Harambee neighborhood was going to get greener.
The church, which is heavily invested in protecting the environment, had secured nearly $28,000 to plant 16 native trees on its property with the hope of bringing more shade to the neighborhood. It was to be a small but important step toward making sure all city neighborhoods reap the health and environmental benefits trees provide, not just wealthier ones.
"We're in a very visible spot in Milwaukee," said Katharine Goray, the church's chair of projects and outreach ministries. "If we can create a ripple effect through other houses of faith and nonprofits, it would make a substantial difference and help balance that lack of green space."
Those plans are now on hold.
The money came from former President Joe Biden's sweeping climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act — money that President Donald Trump froze upon taking office and ordered agencies to review. With the review ongoing, Faith in Place, a Chicago nonprofit which received $1.9 million in Inflation Reduction Act funds for tree-planting work, can't pass on the funds it promised to groups across the upper Midwest.
That included the money for Solomon Community Temple.
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Goray is adamant that the funding freeze won't stop the church from adding to the neighborhood's tree canopy. If the congregation can't plant 16 trees, she said, they can at least plant one.
But it will slow the work down — and with trees, which can take a decade or more to mature, time is of the essence.
The grant money came from a $1.5 billion investment in urban tree-planting that the Biden administration announced in 2023 through the U.S. Forest Service, a division of the Department of Agriculture. It was part of Biden's Justice40 initiative, which mandated 40% of the benefits of certain environmental programs go to disadvantaged communities. Trump ended the Justice40 initiative in his purge of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts from the federal government.
Trees provide myriad benefits to the environment and to health, like filtering out air pollution, storing carbon dioxide and taking water into their root systems to reduce flooding. Tree cover also provides shade, keeping things cool during the summer heat. That helps combat the urban heat island effect, where an abundance of manmade surfaces like parking lots, sidewalks and streets absorb and hold onto heat and produce temperatures several degrees hotter than the overall temperature forecast.
More urban green space has even been tied to improved mental health, more active lifestyles and reduced crime and violence.
But not all neighborhoods have the same amount of tree cover. A 2021 study from the Nature Conservancy found that lower-income blocks had less tree cover than higher-income blocks in 92% of the cities surveyed. People of color are more likely to live in areas with more concrete and fewer trees because of discriminatory practices like redlining.
This is true in Milwaukee, one of the nation's most segregated cities, although organizations across the city have been working to increase tree cover in neighborhoods that need it most. That includes the Harambee neighborhood, which has a lack of trees and lots of impervious surfaces, Goray said.
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The church has more control over its property than, say, a city park, Goray said, and its actions affect more than just one household. That's why it wanted to get involved in the effort.
"If every church or nonprofit or house of faith were even to plant a couple trees ... it would make Harambee much more livable and healthy," she said.
Fifty-nine faith and community groups in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana were to receive money from Faith in Place for tree-planting, education and maintenance, said Rev. Brian Sauder, Faith in Place's president and CEO.
The groups were excited to begin the work when the grants were announced in January, Sauder said. Contacting them to tell them the funds couldn't flow was devastating.
"In my 11 years being CEO of Faith in Place, I haven't had a situation where I committed to our partners, 'We're going to be able to provide this for you,' and haven't been able to follow through on that," Sauder said.
On March 13, Faith in Place joined onto a lawsuit against the Trump administration by Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law group, alleging that the administration is illegally withholding funds from the Inflation Reduction Act that have already been appropriated by Congress.
Sauder said March 28 that his organization has been notified by the Forest Service that some requests for advance payment, which Faith in Place needs to disburse the money, were being "considered and processed." The USDA did not respond to a request for comment from the Journal Sentinel.
Goray said her initial reaction to hearing about what happened to the grant was despair, then anger. But now, she said, she's ready to move forward. Through a different grant, Solomon Community Temple will plant almost 500 native plants on its property this summer, she said, and continue other acts of environmental stewardship.
"If we don't do it," she said, "it's not going to get done."
Madeline Heim is a Report for America corps reporter who writes about environmental issues in the Mississippi River watershed and across Wisconsin. Contact her at 920-996-7266 or [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Federal review of funds stalls Milwaukee church tree-planting project