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clean air act
'Exceptionally Dangerous': Trump EPA Targets Endangerment Finding That Enables Climate Rules
"Zeldin's assertion that the EPA shouldn't address greenhouse gas emissions is like a fire chief claiming that they shouldn't fight fires," said one critic. "It is as malicious as it is absurd."
Jul 29, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration faced an onslaught of criticism on Tuesday for starting the process of repealing the 2009 legal opinion that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the welfare of the American people—which has enabled federal regulations aimed at the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency over the past 15 years.
Confirming reports from last week, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin unveiled the rule to rescind the 2009 "endangerment finding" at a truck dealership in Indiana. According to The New York Times, he said that "the proposal would, if finalized, amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States."
If the administration succeeds in repealing the legal finding, the EPA would lack authority under the Clean Air Act to impose standards for greenhouse gas emissions—meaning the move would kill vehicle regulations. As with the reporting last week, the formal announcement was sharply condemned by climate and health advocates and experts.
"Greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and are the root cause of the climate crisis," said Deanna Noël with Public Citizen's Climate Program, ripping the administration's effort as "grossly misguided and exceptionally dangerous."
"This isn't just a denial of science and reality—it's a betrayal of public trust and yet another signal that this administration is working for corporate interests, and no one else."
"Stripping the EPA of its ability to regulate greenhouse gases is like throwing away the fire extinguisher while the house is already burning," she warned. "The administration is shamelessly handing Big Oil a hall pass to pollute unchecked and dodge accountability, leaving working families to bear the costs through worsening health outcomes, rising energy bills, more climate-fueled extreme weather, and an increasingly unstable future. This isn't just a denial of science and reality—it's a betrayal of public trust and yet another signal that this administration is working for corporate interests, and no one else."
Noël was far from alone in accusing the administration's leaders of serving the polluters who helped Trump return to power.
"Zeldin and Trump are concerned only with maximizing short-term profits for polluting corporations and the CEOs funneling millions of dollars to their campaign coffers," said Jim Walsh, policy director at Food & Water Watch. "Zeldin's assertion that the EPA shouldn't address greenhouse gas emissions is like a fire chief claiming that they shouldn't fight fires. It is as malicious as it is absurd."
Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Safe Climate Transport Campaign, similarly said that the proposal is "purely a political bow to the oil industry" and "Trump is putting fealty to Big Oil over sound science and people's health."
Earthworks policy director Lauren Pagel also called the rule "a perverse gift to the fossil fuel industry that rejects yearslong efforts by the agency, scientists, NGOs, frontline communities, and industry to protect public health and our environment."
"Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin are playing with fire—and with floods and droughts and public health risks, too," she stressed, as about 168 million Americans on Tuesday faced advisories for extreme heat made more likely by the climate crisis.
🚨 The Trump administration just took its most extreme step yet in rolling back climate protections.
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— Sierra Club (@sierraclub.org) July 29, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Justin Chen, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, which represents over 8,000 EPA workers nationwide, said that the repeal plan "is reckless and will have far-reaching, disastrous consequences for the USA."
"EPA career professionals have worked for decades on the development of the science and policy of greenhouse gases to protect the American public," he continued, "and this policy decision completely disregards all of their work in service to the public."
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) highlighted that Chris Wright, head of the Department of Energy, joined Zeldin at the Tuesday press conference and "announced a DOE 'climate science study' alongside remarks that were rife with climate denial talking points and disinformation."
UCS president Gretchen Goldman said that "it's abundantly clear what's going on here. The Trump administration refuses to acknowledge robust climate science and is using the kitchen sink approach: making every specious argument it can to avoid complying with the law."
"But getting around the Clean Air Act won't be easy," she added. "The science establishing climate harms to human health was unequivocally clear back in 2009, and more than 15 years later, the evidence has only accumulated."
Today, Zeldin’s EPA plans to release a proposal to revoke the Endangerment Finding, which is the legal & scientific foundation of EPA’s responsibility to limit climate-heating greenhouse gas pollution from major sources.
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— Moms Clean Air Force (@momscleanairforce.org) July 29, 2025 at 12:58 PM
David Bookbinder, director of law and policy at the Environmental Integrity Project, was a lead attorney in the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court case Massachusetts vs. EPA, which affirmed the agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and ultimately led to the endangerment finding two years later.
Bookbinder said Tuesday that "because this approach has already been rejected by the courts—and doubtless will be again—this baseless effort to pretend that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that cause climate change are not harmful pollutants is nothing more than a transparent attempt to delay and derail our efforts to control greenhouse pollution at the worst possible time, when deadly floods and heat waves are killing more people every day."
In a statement from the Environmental Protection Network, which is made up of ex-EPA staff, Joseph Goffman, former assistant administrator of the agency's Office of Air and Radiation, also cited the 2007 ruling.
"This decision is both legally indefensible and morally bankrupt," Goffman said of the Tuesday proposal. "The Supreme Court made clear that EPA cannot ignore science or evade its responsibilities under the Clean Air Act. By walking away from the endangerment finding, EPA has not only broken with precedent; it has broken with reality."
Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, responded to the EPA proposal with defiance, declaring that "Donald Trump and his Big Oil donors are lighting the world on fire and fueling their private jets with young people's lives. We refuse to be sacrifices for their greed. We're coming for them, and we're not backing down."
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GOP 'Backdoor Nuclear Option' on Filibuster Spells More Harm for American People, Critics Warn
With Trump in office and the wholesale dismantling of democracy underway, one watchdog called what Republicans are planning "the last thing the country needs right now."
May 09, 2025
Government watchdogs and Democratic lawmakers are sounding alarms over a Senate GOP plan to overrule the chamber's parliamentarian and repeal federal waivers that have allowed California to enact stricter pollution standards.
But critics warned that the implications of the Republican plan, which the party's leadership is still discussing, are far-reaching and could enable the GOP to advance other unpopular elements of their pro-corporate, far-right agenda.
"If senators are willing to overrule the Senate parliamentarian and circumvent Senate rules on the filibuster for the Congressional Review Act, there is nothing to stop them from going nuclear over and over with policies that would harm Americans and destabilize our democracy," said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, on Thursday. "This could happen with other CRA proposals or in the reconciliation process."
The CRA allows lawmakers to review and—with the support of a simple majority in both chambers of Congress—overturn federal rules within a limited timeframe. CRA resolutions of disapproval are not subject to the Senate's 60-vote filibuster, a relic of the Jim Crow era that Republicans have selectively defended or scrapped depending on whether they're in the majority.
Republicans want to use the filibuster-proof CRA to block California's Clean Air Act waivers, but the Senate parliamentarian—the chamber's unelected arbiter of Senate rules and procedures—has said the waivers don't qualify as rules subject to the CRA.
Defying the parliamentarian—something Republicans have already done as they craft their bill to slash safety net programs and taxes for the rich—to undo the waivers would effectively gut the filibuster, opponents of the GOP plan warned. Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled House voted to revoke the California waivers using the CRA.
"Anti-democratic and authoritarian measures, corporate giveaways, and rights infringements that could never become law if normal Senate rules were followed—legislation making it harder to vote, repealing core environmental standards, stripping abortion rights, and more—might suddenly become law," Gilbert warned Thursday. "A backdoor nuclear option sets an atrocious precedent and must not be allowed. Critical checks hang in the balance."
"Think about how the Trump administration might abuse this."
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, echoed those concerns, saying in a floor speech Thursday that "the import of overruling the parliamentarian extends far beyond CRA resolutions."
"Think about how the Trump administration might abuse this," said Whitehouse. "Everyone knows by now that President Trump has a beef with a whole host of media outlets, some of which are licensed by the Federal Communications Commission. What's to stop the FCC from submitting CBS' license as a 'rule' and members from introducing a disapproval resolution? Is this really the path we want to go down?"
In a floor speech of his own, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) directly quoted Senate Majority Leader John Thune's (R-S.D.) warning earlier this year against overruling the parliamentarian.
"That's totally akin to killing the filibuster. We can't go there," Thune said in January. "People need to understand that."
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) delivers a speech on the Senate floor on May 8, 2025. (Photo: Sen. Alex Padilla)
Earlier this week, Thune said his caucus is "still looking at" voting on a CRA resolution to revoke the California waivers. Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Axios last week that the upper chamber would "absolutely" take up the House-passed CRA resolution.
Gilbert of Public Citizen said Thursday that "this backdoor nuclear option would not only make the Senate more like the House—it would make the Senate more like the chaotic, make-it-up-as-you-go White House."
"That's the last thing the country needs right now," she added.
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Any Trump EPA Attempt to Stop Regulating Climate Pollution Won’t Stand up to the Facts
The science on climate change is so indisputably well-established, that it’s hard to see how any court would uphold a challenge to it.
Apr 13, 2025
In a blitz of destructive actions announced by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin last month, he specifically called for a reconsideration of the 2009 Endangerment Finding. A formal proposal for reconsideration of the finding (and all the agency regulations and actions that depend on it) is expected this month.
The science underpinning the Endangerment Finding is airtight, but that won’t stop the Trump administration from setting up a rigged process to try to undo it and give a blank check to polluters. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) will fight back to defend climate science and protect public health safeguards.
In an earlier post, I laid out some of the history and context for the 2009 science-backed Endangerment Finding and the Cause or Contribute Finding. These findings followed from the landmark 2007 Mass v. EPA Supreme Court ruling which held that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are unambiguously air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. Together, these establish the clear basis for EPA’s authority and responsibility to set pollutions limits for heat-trapping emissions from vehicles, power plants, and other sources of these pollutants, under the Clean Air Act.
There is nothing mysterious about the heat-trapping attributes of greenhouse gases, nor their impact on public health. It’s called science.
Attacks on the Endangerment Finding and EPA’s Clean Air Act authority from industry interests are nothing new. Importantly, courts have repeatedly upheld both, including in a resounding 2012 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals–D.C. Circuit in Citizens for Responsible Regulation v. EPA. But those who have long sought to overturn or weaken regulations to limit heat-trapping emissions now have Administrator Zeldin in their corner. And he has shown himself to be an unbridled purveyor of disinformation and proponent of harmful attacks on bedrock public health protections, as my colleague Julie McNamara highlights.
The details of what will be included in the reconsideration proposal are unclear at this point. But we do know some of the trumped-up lines of attack the Zeldin EPA could advance to try to invalidate these findings because many of these tired arguments are outlined in EPA’s reconsideration announcement.
Here are the facts:
Fact No. 1: The Science Backing the Endangerment Finding Is Beyond Dispute
Every major scientific society endorses the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change driven by GHG emissions. The Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) and the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report are two major recent authoritative summaries of peer-reviewed climate science, which show that the science on climate change has only become more dire and compelling since 2009.
The impacts of climate change on human health are also starkly clear and backed by overwhelming evidence. Here’s the main finding from the NCA5 chapter on public health, for instance:
Climate change is harming physical, mental, spiritual, and community health through the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events, higher incidences of infectious and vector-borne diseases, and declines in food and water security. These impacts worsen social inequities. Emissions reductions, effective adaptation measures, and climate-resilient health systems can protect human health and improve health equity.
As just one example, climate change is contributing to worsening extreme heat, which exerts a punishing toll on people’s health, including that of outdoor workers. Heat is already the leading cause of extreme weather-related deaths in the United States, and studies show that heat-related mortality is on the rise.
Looking around the nation, with communities reeling from extreme heatwaves, intensified hurricanes, catastrophic wildfires, and record flooding, climate impacts are the lived reality of all too many people. To deny that or obfuscate about the underlying causes is not only disingenuous, but actively harmful and outright cruel.
Fact No. 2: The Law Requires an Independent Scientific Determination of Endangerment, Unhindered by Cost Considerations
A Finding of Endangerment under the Clean Air Act is specifically focused on a threshold scientific determination of whether the pollutant under consideration harms public health or welfare. Costs to industry of meeting any subsequent regulations are not relevant per the statute.
The original Endangerment Finding was reached in the context of the vehicle emissions, per section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, partially excerpted below:
The administrator shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) in accordance with the provisions of this section, standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.
In its 2012 decision, the D.C. Circuit was also clear is noting that “By employing the verb ‘shall,’ Congress vested a non-discretionary duty in EPA.” That duty is not circumscribed by cost considerations.
Of course, the impacts of climate change are themselves incredibly costly and those costs are mounting as heat-trapping emissions rise. Unsurprisingly, the social cost of greenhouse gases, a science-based estimate of those costs, is another metric that the Trump EPA is seeking to undermine in yet another blatant attempt to put a thumb on the scale in favor of polluting industries.
Fact No. 3: EPA Used Well-Established Methodologies in Its Assessment of Six GHGs
As noted in the 2009 Endangerment Finding, the EPA defined the pollutant contributing to climate change as “the aggregate group of the well-mixed greenhouse gases” with similar attributes. The attributes include that they are sufficiently long-lived, directly emitted, contribute to climate warming, and are a focus of science and policy.
The EPA used a very well-established scientific methodology to combine emissions of GHGs on the basis of their heat-trapping potential, measured in carbon-dioxide equivalents. In the case of passenger cars, light- and heavy-duty trucks, buses, and motorcycles—the transportation sources EPA considered for the original Endangerment Finding—they emitted four key greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and hydrofluorocarbons.
False, glib claims in the reconsideration announcement baselessly accuse the 2009 Endangerment Finding of making “creative leaps” and “mysterious” choices. There is nothing mysterious about the heat-trapping attributes of greenhouse gases, nor their impact on public health. It’s called science. Once again, relying on the mountain of evidence in the peer-reviewed scientific literature would make that readily apparent.
Fact No. 4: EPA Has the Responsibility and Authority to Regulate Major Sources of GHGs
The Cause or Contribute Finding—which specifically established that greenhouse gas emissions from new vehicles contribute to the pollution that harms public health—may also come under attack. This finding has been extended to other major sources of GHGs, including power plants and oil and gas operations. However, the Trump administration could attempt to use accounting tricks to avoid regulating emissions—as it has tried before.
In its first term, the administration attempted multiple underhanded maneuvers along these lines, including in the context of methane and volatile organic compound regulations in the oil and gas sector. For these regulations, the administration split up segments of the source category, designated them as separate source categories, used that manipulation to claim inability to regulate certain segments, and asserted that methane emissions from the remaining segments were too small and regulating them would not provide additional benefits, so those too could not be regulated. Separately, in the final days of the administration, EPA released an absurd framework attempting to set thresholds for determining “significance,” trialed in the context of power plants.
This irrational approach could be used to artificially segment components of power plants or the power system, for example, and then claim no regulations are required. This kind of rigged math wouldn’t fool a kindergarten child, but there’s no telling where this administration might go in its desperate attempt to undo or weaken regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.
Zeldin’s Relentless Subversion of EPA’s Mission
Under Administrator Zeldin, EPA’s mission to protect public health and the environment has been completely subverted. His shocking rhetoric lays bare how far he will go to protect polluters at the expense of the public. Here he is, for instance, crowing about going after 31+ EPA regulations and guidance, as well as the enforcement of pollution standards meant to protect all of us:
Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion…
EPA even set up an email address for polluters to send an email to get a presidential exemption from complying with regulations on toxic pollution, such as mercury emissions, regulated under the Clean Air Act!
Zeldin is fervently committed to dismantling public health protections and rolling back enforcement of existing laws passed by Congress. Going after the Endangerment Finding is an integral part of this all-out assault because, in the Trump administration’s harmful calculation, revoking the finding is a potential means to rolling back all the regulations that depend on it.
Ironically, some utilities and oil and gas companies have spoken out in favor of keeping the finding intact, as they fear a greater risk of climate damages lawsuits in the absence of EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases. Of course, this just exposes that they know their products are causing damage. What they seek is the weakest possible exercise of EPA authority so they can continue to reap profits while evading accountability for those harms.
We Can Fight Back With Science
But none of this is a foregone conclusion. The legal and scientific basis for the Endangerment Finding is incredibly strong. The false claims Zeldin and other opponents have trotted out are full of bombast but weak on substance.
The science on climate change is so indisputably well-established, that it’s hard to see how any court would uphold a challenge to it. That’s not to say Zeldin won’t try to find a cabal of fringe “scientists” to try to attack it, but they’re unlikely to succeed on the merits.
Public comments on the proposal to reconsider the Endangerment Finding can help set the record straight on facts. And if the Zeldin EPA ignores them and finalizes a sham finding or revokes the finding with a faulty rationale, that will be challenged in court.
UCS will be closely following the details of EPA’s proposal to reconsider the Endangerment Finding when it is released. And we will let you know how you can add your voice to bolster this crucial science-based finding, and the public health protections that flow from it. So, stay tuned!
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