Trump Administration Launches All-Out Assault on Environmental Protection

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If there can be such a thing as bureaucratic “shock and awe,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin tried to unleash it Wednesday.

He unveiled the Trump administration’s widely anticipated assault on regulation on all fronts at once, announcing 31 separate actions to roll back restrictions on air and water pollution, hand over more authority to states, and relinquish EPA’s mandate to act on climate change under the Clean Air Act.

“These announcements represent the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in the history of the United States,” an EPA representative wrote in one of a slew of press releases. Zeldin said the moves would lower the cost of living, create jobs and revitalize the economy. In a video posted on the social media site X, Zeldin exulted over the plan to rescind the EPA’s 16-year-old determination that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health and welfare, known as the endangerment finding.

“I’ve been told the endangerment finding is considered the holy grail of the climate change religion,” said Zeldin, a former congressman and Army intelligence officer. “For me, the U.S. Constitution and the laws of this nation will be strictly interpreted and followed, no exceptions. Today, the green new scam ends.” Zeldin, who acknowledged the risks of climate change and sea-level rise during his confirmation hearing, borrowed terms from Trump to describe the government actions designed to address the threat. 

He said the moves would lower the cost of living, create jobs and revitalize the economy. But environmental advocates voiced determination to fight back against an onslaught they warned would harm public health and set back the nation’s standard of living. 

“EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin today announced plans for the greatest increase in pollution in decades,” said Amanda Leland, executive director of Environmental Defense Fund, in a statement. “The result will be more toxic chemicals, more cancers, more asthma attacks and more dangers for pregnant women and their children. Rather than helping our economy, it will create chaos.”

Historic rollback, with depleted staff

Zeldin’s announcements mark the start of a dismantling process that could take months or even years. To undo regulations that go back decades, EPA staff would have to write proposals, gather public comments and possibly hold hearings and create a scientific and legal record justifying any decision. The latter will be needed to defend against inevitable lawsuits by environmentalists and states. All of this will have to be carried out by an agency that is severely hobbled by firings and plans to slash its funding to the lowest levels in its 55-year history.

In a post on the social media site Bluesky, John Walke, clean air director and senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said the sheer size of Zeldin’s effort may cause it to collapse on itself.

“The same limited [number] of EPA air office staff & attorneys work on many of these rules,” Walke wrote. “Some have quit, some have been fired, more will be fired. EPA won’t have adequate resources to write defensible rollbacks.”

Walke’s group, NRDC, prevailed in scores of lawsuits against the regulatory rollbacks of the first Trump administration — in some cases because it had not followed the long-standing law for public notice and comment of both regulatory and deregulatory actions. But Zeldin showed an awareness of this potential pitfall.

“The agency cannot prejudge the outcome of this reconsideration or of any future rulemaking,” he said. “EPA will follow the Administrative Procedure Act and Clean Air Act, as applicable, in a transparent way for the betterment of the American people and the fulfillment of the rule of law.”

Zeldin also pointed to recent Supreme Court rulings limiting federal agency authority as providing backing for the plan. The Supreme Court, with a conservative majority bolstered by three Trump-appointed justices, articulated a relatively new doctrine in those cases, saying that on issues of major economic consequence, regulatory agencies cannot act without explicit instructions from Congress.

Congress has never given the EPA explicit instruction to cut greenhouse gases from power plants or motor vehicles, but the agency has relied on the power it was given in the 1970 Clean Air Act to set controls for any pollutant that it finds endangers health and welfare.

In addition to reconsidering the 2009 endangerment finding on greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA is preparing to rescind all regulations that flow from that decision, including those adopted under President Joe Biden to restrict greenhouse gas pollution from power plants and from cars and trucks. And Zeldin proposed ending the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, the 15-year-old effort to take stock of where greenhouse gas emissions are being produced and the nation’s progress in reducing them.

Zeldin called the reporting program “another example of a bureaucratic government program that does not improve air quality. Instead, it costs American businesses and manufacturing millions of dollars, hurting small businesses and the ability to achieve the American Dream.”

However, the EPA website for the program states that “this data can be used by businesses and others to track and compare facilities’ greenhouse gas emissions, identify opportunities to cut pollution, minimize wasted energy and save money.”

The impact of the reporting rule is clear. The larger power plants that were required to report their emissions under the EPA program reduced their carbon dioxide pollution by 7 percent relative to smaller plants that were not subject to reporting, according to a report published in 2021 by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Undercutting the gold-standard Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program will strip American businesses of the transparency they need to remain competitive in an increasingly carbon-conscious global market,” said Avipsa Mahapatra, climate campaign director at Environmental Investigation Agency U.S., a nonprofit based in Washington. “Curtailing mandatory reporting not only hampers innovation, it actively disadvantages domestic industries at home and abroad, just as many are striving to meet the growing demand for cleaner, more efficient solutions. It also poses clear risks to public health, since the same emissions we fail to track often coincide with pollutants that disproportionately harm vulnerable communities.” 

Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, agreed.

“You may not pay attention as an average citizen to the reporting requirements for these pollutants that change the weather, but you’re going to suffer when they’re gone,” he said.

Rule changes threaten water and air 

The planned rollback of environmental protections goes far beyond greenhouse gases and includes lifting restrictions on mercury and air toxics, particulate matter pollution, regional haze and smokestack pollution that crosses state borders. The EPA will seek to roll back a 2023 “Good Neighbor” rule that required upwind states to reduce pollution affecting their downwind neighbors, part of Zeldin’s plan to give more authority to states in what he called “cooperative federalism.” In his video message, Zeldin said these moves would “fulfill President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, revitalize our auto industry, restore the rule of law and give power back to the States.” He called them “suffocating rules that restrict nearly every sector of our economy and cost Americans trillions of dollars.”

Trump and his team are placing a bet on regulatory rollbacks as a way to at least temporarily lift the U.S. economy and save consumers money, even while economists and industry groups are warning that other aspects of his policy are likely to drag down GDP and increase costs. Tariffs on metals and on major U.S. trading partners are likely to drive the price of cars up, for example. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group for automakers, has said Trump’s tariffs could boost the sticker prices of new cars by up to 25 percent.

Zeldin also announced EPA would revise a key definition that guides environmental protection under the Clean Water Act, a change environmental advocates say would threaten water supplies for millions of Americans.

He said that the changes to the so-called “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule would seek to limit the definition of such waters in line with a 2023 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that excluded much of the nation’s wetlands.

“We want clean water for all Americans supported by clear and consistent rules for all states, farmers and small businesses,” Zeldin said in a written statement. “Our goal is to protect America’s water resources consistent with the law of the land while empowering American farmers, landowners, entrepreneurs and families to help Power the Great American Comeback.” 

Environmental advocates said the administration was taking an extreme approach to the court’s ruling.  

“Trump’s EPA plainly intends to radically restrict protections for our waterways and wetlands,” Andrew Wetzler, NRDC’s nature program senior vice president, said in a written statement. “If it follows through with this plan, the administration will be taking an extreme approach that endangers communities across the country — leaving them more exposed to toxic pollution, dangerous flooding and the contamination of drinking water supplies for tens of millions of people.”

Zeldin and the administration received plaudits for their announcements from Republicans and some industry groups. 

“Today’s announcement by the agency outlines a path toward a sensible WOTUS definition that will provide clarity to Wyoming landowners in line with congressional intent and the Supreme Court’s ruling,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo. “I am thrilled to learn that sanity has returned to the EPA.”

The American Petroleum Institute, a trade association representing the U.S. oil and gas industry, said that last year’s election gave Trump the mandate to act.

“Voters sent a clear message in support of affordable, reliable and secure American energy, and the Trump administration is answering the call by moving forward on many of the priorities in API’s five-point policy roadmap,” API President and CEO Mike Sommers said in a written statement. “As this regulatory process moves forward, we are committed to working with Secretary Zeldin on commonsense policies that advance American energy dominance.”

But Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, said such corporate supporters of the president were the only ones who stood to benefit from the rollbacks, which he pledged his organization would fight “tooth and nail.”

“Donald Trump’s actions will cause thousands of Americans to die each year,” Jealous said. “It will send thousands of children to the hospital and force even more to miss school. It will pollute the air and water in communities across the country. And it will cause our energy bills to go up even more than they already are because of his disastrous policies. But as they put all of us at risk, Trump and his administration are celebrating because it will help corporate polluters pad their profit margin.”

Inside Climate News reporter Dan Gearino contributed to this report.