Democrats are digging in their heels following EPA’s proposal to roll back the scientific finding that underpins federal rules against planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Climate-minded Republicans, on the other hand, appear to be giving President Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt.
The administration moved Tuesday to overturn a 16-year-old endangerment finding, which says greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to human health.
Congressional Democrats promised Tuesday to fight EPA’s actions by encouraging legal challenges and expanded state climate efforts.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the administration “will rue the day it put this awful scheme in motion.”
“They have to work it through courts and administrative procedures that are based on honesty and fact — and they’re going to have some problems,” Whitehouse said in an interview.
Whitehouse said Democrats will work to “put a spotlight” on the policy shift, which he says amounts to a denial of climate change.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said the move was “going to kill people.” “
Donald Trump wants to fight — we’re going to give him a fight,” Markey said during a rally at EPA headquarters.
“Every single day for the next year and a half, we’re going to inject this issue into the politics of our country, because he has decided to inject the danger of climate change into every single family in our nation.”
Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) wrote on social media last week, in anticipation of the policy change, that “when the history of this era is written, Donald Trump will have been responsible for more deaths than Stalin, Mao and Hitler combined.”
But House Science, Space and Technology Chair Brian Babin (R-Texas) said that the EPA decision “isn’t about rejecting environmental stewardship,” but rather about rejecting regulations that support clean energy and electric vehicles.
“For too long, an unelected bureaucracy — backed by special interests — used the courts to impose climate regulations Congress never authorized,” Babin said in a statement.
Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told POLITICO’s E&E News reversing the endangerment finding does not amount to climate science denial.
“I think it’s time to see, is this constitutional? So I support what the administration is doing,” Capito said.
Since the endangerment finding was established in 2009, opponents have challenged it in court a number of times, most recently in 2023, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the finding and the Supreme Court declined to take up the case.
Murkowski: ‘Not unexpected’
At least one GOP senator expressed concern Tuesday at the proposed rollback. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said he was worried that businesses will struggle to keep up with a changing regulatory landscape, especially when future Democratic presidents could move to restore the endangerment finding.
“I just believe that we’re at our best when we realize that administrations change and priorities change. When we have these sort of whipsaw back-and-forth decisions, it hurts the underlying intent,” Tillis said.
Trump did not move to scrap the endangerment finding during his first term. Instead, EPA worked on climate rulemaking that was different from Democrats’.
Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and John Curtis (R-Utah), founder of the Conservative Climate Caucus in the House, declined to comment on the matter Tuesday.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters that the move was “not unexpected” and that she had received word ahead of time from EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.
“I’m not surprised, but it is a big undertaking,” Murkowski said.
‘Knocked down but not knocked out’
Markey pledged Tuesday to back any legal challenges and invoked Massachusetts v. EPA, a 2007 case in which Markey’s state pushed the federal government to regulate fossil fuel emissions.
“If this is how the Trump administration is going to operate, this is Massachusetts v. EPA all over again. We’re ready to fight. We’re knocked down but not knocked out,” Markey said.
If the Trump administration’s endangerment finding rollback survives legal challenge, Democrats could also try amending the Clean Air Act to make an explicit mention of planet-warming emissions once they regain power.
But for now, the focus is on making sure Trump and Zeldin’s move falls flat with the courts, while some state and local governments keep working to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Whitehouse said, “While there is no substitute for federal action to limit carbon pollution, I expect that states and cities across the country will try to fill the void created by EPA’s shameful retreat.”
This story also appears in Climatewire.
