Electric bus grants no longer prioritize low income neighborhoods, after the executive orders behind that priority were revoked in 2025

Electric bus grants no longer prioritize low income neighborhoods

Electric bus grants no longer prioritize low income neighborhoods, after the Federal Transit Administration removed the rule that told applicants it would. For fiscal years 2023 and 2024, the agency own notice for its Low or No Emission bus grant program said it would give priority consideration to projects that support the Justice40 initiative, a government wide goal that 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments reach communities the agency defined using low income, high or persistent poverty and high housing cost among its named criteria. That priority rested on 2 executive orders, cited by number inside the grant notice itself.

The 3 executive orders that were revoked

On January 20, 2025, a new executive order, Executive Order 14148, revoked both of those orders by name, Executive Order 13985 and Executive Order 14008, along with a third, Executive Order 14096, the government wide environmental justice order. All 3 are confirmed present in the list of actions inside the revocation order, a list that runs many pages and reuses the same letter style for 2 unrelated sections later in the same document, so this article checked each of the 3 named orders directly rather than trying to count the whole list.

The rule disappeared for 2 rounds running

The next 2 rounds of the identical grant program carry no mention anywhere of equity, environmental justice, disadvantaged communities or the Justice40 initiative. This article confirmed the absence directly, reading the full text of both the fiscal year 2025 and fiscal year 2026 notices through a text extraction tool, since the agency website blocks a normal fetch, and searching that text for every 1 of those terms. The fiscal year 2026 round adds something new instead, a certification that a recipient runs no diversity, equity and inclusion program that violates the Constitution or federal antidiscrimination law, citing a different executive order, Executive Order 14173.

The money fell too, on its own timeline

Funding for the same Low or No Emission Program fell across all 4 years, from 1.22 billion dollars in fiscal year 2023 to 589 million dollars in fiscal year 2026, a drop of about 52% calculated for this article from figures the agency itself published. That decline is gradual across all 4 rounds, while the equity language disappeared completely between 1 year and the next, so the 2 changes are separate facts, not 1 cause and effect. No source read for this article attributes a specific reason to any official for removing the equity language from this particular grant program.