The Trump administration on Thursday finalized a sweeping rollback of federal climate policy, revoking the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 endangerment finding and sharply curtailing the agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act.
The endangerment finding, first issued during the Obama administration, concluded that six greenhouse gases could be categorized as dangerous to human health. It determined that emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases posed a hazard to public health and welfare by driving dramatic planetary warming. Since then, it has underpinned the EPA’s authority to limit planet warming pollution from vehicles, power plants, and oil and gas operations. It has also served as the legal basis for virtually every major climate related EPA regulation enacted under the Clean Air Act.
Announcing the move, President Donald Trump said, “We are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding,” calling the policy “disastrous.”
Trump also said repealing the regulations “has nothing to do with public health.” He added, “This was all a scam, a giant scam,” and, “This was a rip off of the country by Obama and Biden.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin framed the decision as a historic deregulatory action. In an EPA press release, Zeldin stated, “Referred to by some as the ‘Holy Grail’ of the ‘climate change religion,’ the Endangerment Finding is now eliminated.”
Standing beside Trump on Thursday, Zeldin used a slightly different description. “Today, the Trump EPA has finalized the single largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States of America. Referred to by some as the holy grail of federal regulatory overreach, the 2009 Obama EPA endangerment finding is now eliminated,” Zeldin said.
Zeldin also laid out the agency’s legal position. “If Congress didn’t authorize it, EPA shouldn’t be doing it,” Zeldin said. “If Congress wants EPA to regulate the heck out of greenhouse gasses emitted from motor vehicles, then Congress can clearly make that the law.”
The administration did not release the full text of the repeal before announcing it. According to reporting, the EPA’s justification relies primarily on legal arguments rather than a direct rejection of climate science. The agency argues that previous administrations exceeded their statutory authority when using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
In its press release, the EPA concluded that the Clean Air Act “does not provide statutory authority for EPA” to issue vehicle emissions standards “including for the purpose of addressing global climate change, and therefore has no legal basis for the Endangerment Finding and resulting regulations.”
The decision immediately affects vehicle emissions rules, since those standards stem directly from the endangerment finding. Under former President Joe Biden, the EPA sought to tighten greenhouse gas standards to encourage automakers to produce more fuel efficient hybrids and electric vehicles. Those efforts are now set to be reversed.
Cars and trucks are already the largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, contributing about 1.8 billion metric tons in 2022. The White House has said that reduced efficiency standards will “save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations.”
The economic consequences of climate change have also grown more pronounced. A study by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania estimated that increased natural disasters and sea level rise caused by American corporations’ fossil fuel outputs could lead to $87 trillion in economic disruption over the next 25 years.
Recent data reflects escalating costs. In the United States, weather disasters exacerbated by global warming caused $115 billion in total damages last year, the third highest annual total since tracking began in 1980, behind only 2023 and 2024. Last year also recorded more billion dollar disasters than any year on record.
Legal precedent surrounding EPA authority over greenhouse gases dates back nearly two decades. In 2007, the US Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. In 2022, the Court upheld the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants but narrowed the scope of that authority.
Meredith Hankins, legal director for federal climate at the Natural Resources Defense Fund, said the 2022 decision “never questioned that EPA had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases.” She added, “That was settled law.”
The repeal is expected to be challenged in court. Climate groups have already announced their intent to file lawsuits.
Abigail Dillen, president of Earthjustice, said, “The courts have repeatedly affirmed EPA’s obligation to clean up climate pollution.” She continued, “There is no way to reconcile EPA’s decision with the law, the science, and the reality of disasters that are hitting us harder every year.”
Dillen added, “Earthjustice and our partners will see the Trump administration in court.”
A coalition of public health organizations including the American Lung Association and the American Public Health Association has also announced plans to sue, calling the regulatory repeal “unlawful.”
Environmental advocates have described the decision in stark terms. The Sierra Club said the administration’s action would “formalize climate denialism as official government policy.”
Anne Jellema, executive director of 350.org, said repealing the endangerment finding “isn’t about saving taxpayers’ money, it’s about saving an industry that has already been exposed as a permanent danger to American families.”
She added, “While the Trump administration can manipulate scientific agencies, it can never suppress the truth that ordinary people in the U.S. and around the world are paying the real price for Big Oil’s profits: Lives are being lost, homes are being destroyed, and costs are soaring.”
David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s climate program, warned that “if left to stand,” the rollback “will hamstring the government’s ability to combat the most terrible environmental threat in human history, harming Americans and the world for decades to come.”
Arkush also said, “Abundant scientific evidence supports the EPA’s prior conclusion that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare.” He added, “Americans feel the effects of climate change constantly, as we experience more dangerous hurricanes, furnace-like heat domes, walls of water slamming into our children’s summer camps, raging wildfires, and other extreme weather driven by greenhouse gases.”
Former EPA official Joe Goffman, who led the Office of Air and Radiation under Biden, suggested the administration’s approach is aimed at reshaping federal authority through the courts. “Their definition of winning I believe has been and will be when they take final action and defend their action in the courts, to permanently remove EPA’s Clean Air Act authority to regulate greenhouse gases,” Goffman said.
Jeff Holmstead, an energy attorney and former high ranking EPA official in the George W. Bush administration, described the stakes if the repeal is upheld. “If the Trump administration repeal is ‘upheld in court, no future EPA will be able to regulate (carbon dioxide) emissions,” Holmstead said.
Attorneys with the Natural Resources Defense Fund noted that the administration’s legal arguments mark a departure from past practice. Hankins said, “It’s not something that has been done before.”
The outcome of the repeal now rests with the courts, where judges will determine whether the EPA retains authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases or whether the rollback stands as a lasting shift in federal climate policy.
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