WASHINGTON – In what he called the “most consequential day of deregulation in American history,” the head of the Environmental Protection Agency announced a series of actions on Wednesday to roll back landmark environmental regulations, including rules on coal-fired power plant pollution, climate change, and electric vehicles.
“We are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin wrote in an essay for The Wall Street Journal.
If approved after a lengthy process that includes public comment, the Trump administration’s actions will eliminate trillions of dollars in regulatory costs and “hidden taxes,” Zeldin said, lowering the cost of living for American families and lowering prices for such necessities as buying a car, heating your home, and running a business.
“Our actions will also reignite American manufacturing, spreading economic benefits to communities,” he wrote in an email. “Energy dominance stands at the center of America’s resurgence.”
Overall, Zeldin stated that he is repealing 31 environmental regulations, including a scientific finding that has long served as the foundation for US action on climate change.
Zeldin stated that he and President Donald Trump support revising the agency’s 2009 finding that climate-warming greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
The Obama administration’s determination under the Clean Air Act serves as the legal foundation for a slew of climate regulations aimed at motor vehicles, power plants, and other pollutants.
Environmentalists and climate scientists refer to the endangerment finding as a cornerstone of US law, and any attempt to overturn it is unlikely to succeed.
“In the face of overwhelming science, it is impossible to think that the EPA could develop a contradictory finding that would stand up in court,” said David Doniger, a climate expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
In a related action, Zeldin stated that the EPA will rewrite a rule limiting air pollution from fossil-fuel-fired power plants, as well as a separate measure limiting emissions from cars and trucks. Zeldin and the Republican president incorrectly refer to the car rule as a “electric vehicle mandate.”
President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration claimed that the power plant rules would reduce pollution and improve public health while ensuring America’s dependable, long-term supply of electricity.
Biden, who has made combating climate change a hallmark of his presidency, cited the car rule as a key factor in what he described as “historic progress” toward his pledge that half of all new cars and trucks sold in the United States will be zero-emission by 2030.
The EPA will also target rules limiting industrial pollution of mercury and other air toxins, soot pollution, and a “good neighbor” rule aimed at limiting smokestack emissions that cause smog in downwind areas. The EPA also targeted a clean water law, which protects rivers, streams, and wetlands at the federal level.
None of the changes take effect immediately, and almost all will necessitate a lengthy rulemaking process. Environmental groups vowed to oppose the actions, which one said would cause “the greatest increase in pollution in decades” in the United States.
Amanda Leland, the executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund, made the claim while condemning Zeldin’s “unlawful attack on the public health of the American people.”
According to Zeldin, the EPA has also terminated its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and will close parts of the agency that focus on environmental justice. The effort aimed to improve conditions in areas heavily polluted by industry, primarily in low-income, Black or Hispanic communities.
“This is not about abandoning environmental protection — it is about achieving it through innovation and not strangulation,” Zeldin tweeted. “By reconsidering rules that throttled oil and gas production and unfairly targeted coal-fired power plants, we are ensuring that American energy remains clean, affordable and reliable.”
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, described the EPA’s action as “the latest form of Republican climate denial.”
They can no longer deny that climate change is occurring, so they are pretending it is not a threat, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that it is, possibly, the greatest threat that we face today.”
The directive to reconsider the endangerment finding and other EPA rules was part of Project 2025, Trump’s conservative second-term plan. Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget and co-author of Project 2025, described the actions as long overdue.
“The EPA’s climate regulation impacts the entire national economy, including jobs, wages, and family budgets,” Vought stated Wednesday.
“The Trump administration’s ignorance is trumped only by its malice towards the planet,” countered Jason Rylander, legal director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.
“Come hell and high water, raging fires and deadly heatwaves, Trump and his cronies are bent on putting polluter profits ahead of people’s lives.”
Reconsidering the endangerment finding and other actions “will not stand up in court,” Rylander stated. “We are going to fight it every step of the way.”
The United States is the world’s second largest carbon polluter, following China, and the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases.
The moves to terminate environmental justice staff follow a decision last week to drop a case against a Louisiana petrochemical plant accused of increasing cancer risk in a predominantly Black community.
Zeldin described environmental justice as a term that “has been used primarily as an excuse to fund left-wing activists instead of actually spending those dollars to directly remediate environmental issues for those communities.”
Matthew Tejada, who previously led the EPA’s environmental justice office, stated that Trump and Zeldin are “taking us back to a time of unfettered pollution across the nation, leaving every American exposed to toxic chemicals, dirty air, and contaminated water.” Tejada now works for the NRDC.
Anne Bradbury, CEO of the American Exploration & Production Council, an oil industry group, applauded Zeldin’s actions, saying the United States is “stronger and more secure when we are energy dominant.”
Bradbury stated that her group has long advocated for changes to EPA rules that are “workable, effective, and build on the significant emissions reductions” made by oil and gas producers.
“We support updating these rules so the American people can continue to benefit from affordable, reliable and clean American energy.”
New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, described Zeldin’s actions as “a despicable betrayal of the American people.”
Pallone stated that every day, more Americans lose their jobs, homes, and even their lives as a result of worsening climate disasters.
Trump and Zeldin “are making a mockery of those people’s pain,” Pallone said, adding that this will have immediate and disastrous consequences for the environment and health of all Americans.”
