EPA tells White House to strike down ‘endangerment finding’ on climate – Regulates CO2 as pollutant under the Clean Air Act – Reversal to be ‘one of its most consequential steps yet to derail federal climate efforts’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/02/26/epa-endangerment-finding-trump-climate/
by
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has privately urged the White House to strike down a scientific finding underpinning much of the federal government’s push to combat climate change, according to three people briefed on the matter.
The 2009 “endangerment finding” cleared the way for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act by concluding that the planet-warming gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. Both the Obama and Biden administrations used that determination to set strict limits on emissions from cars and power plants.
By repealing the endangerment finding, the Trump administration would be taking one of its most consequential steps yet to derail federal climate efforts. In recent days, the administration has also blocked work that is central to international climate research and barred federal scientists and diplomats from attending a major climate event in China.
EPA officials weighed whether to reverse the endangerment finding during President Donald Trump’s first term but opted not to do so.
Conservatives have argued that repealing the finding is critical to unraveling what they see as burdensome limits on emissions from various sectors of the economy. Environmentalists, in contrast, say the finding has justified stronger regulations that have yielded enormous benefits for the planet and public health.
On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order that tasked the EPA with reviewing the “legality and continuing applicability of” the endangerment finding. The order gave Zeldin 30 days to submit recommendations to Russell Vought, the head of the White House budget office.
EPA officials have not shared the recommendations publicly. EPA spokeswoman Molly Vaseliou declined to comment on the matter Tuesday, saying in an email, “EPA is in compliance with this aspect of the President’s Executive Order.”
Mandy Gunasekara, who served as EPA chief of staff at the end of Trump’s first term and wrote the EPA chapter in the conservative blueprint Project 2025, has been advising the administration on repealing the endangerment finding, according to the three individuals briefed on the matter.
Jonathan Brightbill, who was a top deputy in the Justice Department’s environment and natural resources division during Trump’s first term, has also provided legal advice, these people said. Brightbill recently served on the Trump transition team at the Justice Department and is a partner at the law firm Winston & Strawn.
Gunasekara and Brightbill did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The endangerment finding has sparked legal and political battles in Washington for more than 15 years. In 2007, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. In response, the EPA first issued the endangerment finding and then established the first-ever carbon limits for vehicles and power plants.
During Trump’s first term, skeptics of mainstream climate science filed a petition asking the EPA to repeal the determination. But agency lawyers rejected that petition on Trump’s last day in office in 2021.
Allies of the fossil fuel industry cheered the idea that the administration would revisit the issue.
“They unfortunately didn’t do this in the first term, so I’m pleased to see that they’re working on this in the second term,” said Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, an advocacy group for the oil and gas sector.
Myron Ebell, who led the EPA transition team during Trump’s first term, said nixing the endangerment finding could make it easier to overturn Biden-era climate policies.
“If you want to go back and redo one of these rules, you’re going to have a very spirited court battle if you ignore the endangerment finding,” said Ebell, the chairman of the conservative American Lands Council. “So I think they really need to do this.”
But Sean Donahue — an attorney who has represented environmental groups that support the endangerment finding — said he thinks any repeal effort will be struck down, given the robust body of scientific evidence on the dangers of planetary warming.
“You can have a lot of good and reasonable disputes about exactly how we should be addressing climate change,” he said in a phone interview. “But the proposition that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities don’t endanger public health and welfare is not a position that could be supported by the science or what EPA’s own record suggests.”