Trump spending freeze uproots urban tree-planting

By Marc Heller | 02/04/2025 01:48 PM EST

The hold on funding and upcoming appropriations cycle pose twin challenges for the historic push to green public spaces.

Ameen Taylor plants a tree at the Coleman Young Community Center in Detroit.

Ameen Taylor plants a tree at the Coleman Young Community Center on April 14, 2023, in Detroit. Former President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act included $1.5 billion in grants over the next decade for urban trees. Carlos Osorio/AP

The federal government’s drive to green America’s streets may soon be cut short.

Just three years after the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act directed $1.5 billion to a Forest Service program to plant trees in communities large and small around the country, the urban tree movement is facing a dual challenge.

On one hand are the grants already awarded or announced, now tangled in the Trump administration’s pause on spending related to the climate law. On the other is the approaching appropriations season for fiscal 2026, when the new administration focused on smaller government will submit its first budget request to Congress.

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If this budget request looks like past ones, the Forest Service program — called urban and community forestry — may have a target on it. President Donald Trump called for its elimination throughout his first term. Even Democrats have looked for savings there, and former President Barack Obama proposed cutting the program to focus more closely on the biggest cities.

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