The Trump administration on Thursday moved to revoke a 2009 EPA determination that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide threaten public health and welfare, a foundational legal step for U.S. climate regulation under the Clean Air Act. The Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule rescinding the “endangerment finding,” according to the Associated Press account, and the move is expected to trigger legal challenges as the administration seeks to unwind regulations that have long been built on that court-tested determination.
For years, the 2009 finding has served as the core basis for federal greenhouse-gas limits aimed at reducing climate pollution from multiple sectors, including motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources. The AP report said the Obama-era finding has been the legal underpinning for nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act, and that revoking it would remove the regulatory structure that depends on that scientific and legal conclusion.
The EPA’s action also has immediate regulatory implications, the reporting said. By eliminating the endangerment finding, the repeal removed greenhouse-gas emissions standards for cars and trucks and could broaden into a wider undoing of climate rules for stationary sources such as power plants and oil and gas facilities, experts said. The AP report said the repeal could become a tool for future efforts to invalidate other climate-related regulations that rely on the same legal foundation.
In remarks at a White House ceremony, President Donald Trump called the move “the single largest deregulatory action in American history, by far.” He also described the endangerment finding as “one of the greatest scams in history” and claimed it “had no basis in fact” or law, the AP report said. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, a former Republican congressman tapped by Trump to lead the agency, called the endangerment finding “the Holy Grail of federal regulatory overreach” and argued that the Obama and Biden administrations used it to expand costly climate requirements.
Zeldin and Trump’s arguments were met by sharp criticism from environmental groups and public health advocates. Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said, “This action will only lead to more climate pollution, and that will lead to higher costs and real harms for American families,” adding that the consequences would show up in areas including health, property values, and water supply. Another climate expert, David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the administration was using the repeal as a “kill shot” to make nearly all climate regulations invalid and to hinder future greenhouse-gas rules.
The reporting tied the fight over the finding to the courts and to an earlier Supreme Court ruling that has helped stabilize the legal basis of climate regulation. The AP report said the Supreme Court upheld the endangerment finding in a 2007 case, Massachusetts v. EPA, ruling that planet-warming greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning qualify as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. After that decision, courts uniformly rejected legal challenges to the endangerment finding, including a 2023 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the AP report said.
Former Biden White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy called the Trump administration’s actions reckless. She said, “This EPA would rather spend its time in court working for the fossil fuel industry than protecting us from pollution and the escalating impacts of climate change,” according to the AP report. Former President Barack Obama also criticized the move on X, saying repeal of the endangerment finding would make Americans “less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money,” the report said. A pediatrician, Dr. Lisa Patel, said in a statement that the action would lead to more sick children seeking emergency care for issues including asthma attacks and more premature births, and that her colleagues would see more heart attacks and cancer.
Alongside the EPA rule rescinding the endangerment finding, the AP report said the agency also planned other steps affecting greenhouse-gas limits. The EPA said it would propose a two-year delay to a Biden-era rule restricting greenhouse gas emissions by cars and light trucks. It also said it would end incentives for automakers that install automatic start-stop ignition systems, which Zeldin characterized in the report as a device “everyone hates.”
The reporting also described the backdrop of the administration’s broader push to loosen climate-related rules. It said the EPA action followed an executive order from Trump directing the agency to submit a report on “the legality and continuing applicability” of the endangerment finding. Conservatives and some congressional Republicans have long sought to undo what they consider overly restrictive and economically damaging limits on greenhouse gases, the AP report said, as Trump and Zeldin argue the repeal is the path toward deregulatory relief.