{"id":10070,"date":"2026-02-12T14:15:24","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T14:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/02\/12\/trump-plans-to-repeal-the-finding-that-lets-the-epa-regulate-climate-warming-emissions-mother-jones\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T14:15:24","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T14:15:24","slug":"trump-plans-to-repeal-the-finding-that-lets-the-epa-regulate-climate-warming-emissions-mother-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2026\/02\/12\/trump-plans-to-repeal-the-finding-that-lets-the-epa-regulate-climate-warming-emissions-mother-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Plans to Repeal the Finding That Lets the EPA Regulate Climate-Warming Emissions – Mother Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Donald Trump, and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin at a rally in 2024.<\/span>Erin Clark\/The Boston Globe\/Getty<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Get your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This story was originally published b<\/em>y the<\/em> Guardian<\/a> and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Climate Desk<\/a>\u00a0collaboration.<\/em><\/p>\n

In what is <\/span>set to be its most audacious anti-environment move yet, the Trump administration on Thursday will roll back the mechanism allowing the government to regulate planet-heating pollution, the White House press secretary\u00a0has told reporters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump will be joined by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to formalize the recession of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding,\u201d Karoline Leavitt said at a press conference on Tuesday. \u201cThis will be the largest deregulatory action in American history.\u201d<\/p>\n

The finding determined that CO2<\/sub>\u00a0and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, establishing a legal basis to regulate them under the Clean Air Act. Its overturning would be a \u201cdevastating blow to millions of Americans facing growing risks of unnatural disasters,\u201d said Meredith Hankins, federal climate legal director at the environmental advocacy nonprofit National Resources Defense Council.<\/p>\n

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\u201cTrump and Zeldin are telling our families: we\u2019ll let you get sicker and watch your healthcare costs skyrocket as long as oil and gas CEOs can profit.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cThe Trump EPA is cynically pretending climate change isn\u2019t a risk to Americans\u2019 health and welfare,\u201d said Hankins. \u201cThis is the biggest attack ever on federal authority to tackle the climate crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The rollback is sure to draw legal challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t going to stand without a fight,\u201d Hankins added. \u201cThe EPA\u2019s slapdash legal arguments should be laughed out of court. We will be seeing them in court\u2014and we are going to win.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Environmental Defense Fund has also promised to sue the EPA over the rule, said Fred Krupp, its president.\u00a0<\/strong>Abigail Dillen, president of the green legal organization Earthjustice, also said her group \u201cwill see the\u00a0Trump administration<\/a>\u00a0in court..<\/p>\n

In a statement, an EPA spokesperson called the endangerment finding \u201cone of the most damaging decisions in modern history\u201d and said \u201chardworking families and small businesses have paid the price\u201d for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cEPA is actively working to deliver a historic action for the American people,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office directing EPA to assess whether the endangerment finding should be preserved.<\/p>\n

After Zeldin announced the plan to\u00a0repeal the finding<\/a>\u00a0in July 2025, the agency received half a million comments on the proposal. He then submitted the repeal of the legal determination for\u00a0White House review last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Leavitt said on Tuesday the rollback would save Americans $1.3 trillion, but did not explain how officials arrived at that number. Though the new rule may save some corporations money, it could pose trillions in climate damages and healthcare costs, experts warn. The climate rules EPA is targeting\u00a0could prevent tens of thousands of deaths<\/a>\u00a0and save the US $275 billion for each year they are in effect, an analysis by the\u00a0Associated Press<\/a>\u00a0in July found.<\/p>\n

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Trump\u2019s EPA has also sought a finding that emissions from power plants \u201cdo not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cTrump and Zeldin are telling our families: we\u2019ll let you get sicker and watch your healthcare costs skyrocket as long as oil and gas CEOs can profit,\u201d said Alex Witt, senior adviser at environmental advocacy group Climate Power.<\/p>\n

The endangerment finding forms the legal underpinning of virtually all federal climate regulations, including those on vehicles, oil and gas operations, and power plants. But the final rule, Zeldin\u00a0told the Wall Street Journal<\/em> this week<\/a>, will apply only to emissions standards on cars and trucks, not those governing stationary sources such as power plants.<\/p>\n

The EPA did not directly confirm the scope of the planned change. The spokesperson said: \u201cThe Endangerment Finding is the legal prerequisite used by the Obama and Biden administrations to justify trillions of dollars of greenhouse gas regulations covering new vehicles and engines. Absent this finding, EPA would lack statutory authority\u2026to prescribe standards for certain motor vehicle emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The agency has separately\u00a0proposed to find<\/a>\u00a0that emissions from power plants \u201cdo not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution\u201d and therefore should not be regulated.<\/p>\n

Gretchen Goldman, president of the science advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists, said: \u201cThe science establishing harm to human health and the environment from global warming emissions was evident in 2009 and it\u2019s even more undeniable today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEPA has a legal obligation to regulate this pollution under the Clean Air Act,\u201d said Goldman, who previously served in the Department of Transportation and the White House. \u201cThe American public deserves a government that will face the challenge of the climate crisis head on with proven policy solutions, not actively serve as agents of destruction by worsening it to boost fossil fuel profits.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Donald Trump, and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin at a rally in 2024.Erin Clark\/The Boston Globe\/Getty Get your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily. This story was originally published by the Guardian and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0Climate Desk\u00a0collaboration. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}