Democrats on Capitol Hill erupted at the news that Donald Trump’s EPA plans to scrap a landmark scientific finding that underpins U.S. climate policy.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s move to challenge the endangerment finding — which gives the agency its authority to regulate greenhouse gases by finding they threaten public health — is setting off a firestorm among Capitol Hill’s climate hawks, who warn it would erode years of climate policy victories.
Democrats vowed to fight the move, but it’s unclear how they’ll challenge it as the minority in both chambers.
“It’s a war on clean air, clean water, clean land,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). “It’s the most important environmental decision in the history of the United States.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I), who leads Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that has jurisdiction over EPA, also lambasted the move.
“It’s a little hard to pretend that there’s no endangerment while you’re seeing billions of dollars in harm and collapsing property insurance markets,” Whitehouse said. He said of Republicans, “Their subservience to the fossil fuel industry can lead them to weird places.”
Republicans and other conservatives, on the other hand, were delighted with the move.
“A reversal would be the factual basis for ending federal government participation in the climate hoax and Green New Scam,” Steve Milloy said in a post on X. Milloy worked on Trump’s first transition and is on the board of the Heartland Institute, an anti-climate advocacy group.
The potential rollback of the endangerment finding, confirmed by three people granted anonymity to speak candidly, comes as the agency is considering slashing its spending by 65 percent.
Zeldin is also seeking to claw back spending from the Inflation Reduction Act, and hundreds of employees have either been fired or left the agency in recent weeks.
It’s unclear how the Trump EPA will unwind the landmark finding, which dates back to 2009 under then-President Barack Obama. But supporters of the effort believe it is likely to go through a lengthy rulemaking process to roll it back.
“I think it’s the procedure they have to take,” Milloy said in an interview. “[H]opefully that will be done as quickly as possible.”
The three people familiar with EPA’s plans said they expected the agency to reject the bedrock justification for regulating greenhouse gas emissions in some fashion to give agencies freer rein to dismantle climate rules.
If the finding is scrapped, it would rip away EPA’s mandate to regulate sources of climate pollution from sources like power plants, oil and gas infrastructure and vehicles and erect a barrier for Democrats to tackle climate change in the future. But EPA would face a torrent of legal challenges if they try to undo it.
‘A very strategic move’
While Democrats vowed to fight the move, they were not entirely surprised.
“It’s exactly what you would expect from this president,” said Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).
Markey added that he believed it was a quid pro quo to the fossil fuel industry.
“It’s to pay back the natural gas, oil and coal industry for the hundreds of millions of dollars which they raised for the Trump campaign in 2024,” he said. “It’s absolutely irresponsible what they’re doing, and I’m going to fight it every single step of the way.”
Trump campaigned in 2024 on ramping up fossil fuel production and slashing swaths of green initiatives. In his first term, Trump’s EPA considered killing the endangerment finding but ultimately opted against it due to its significant legal risks.
Green groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council have already said they will take the administration to court.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) alluded to those challenges but thought the administration would prevail on the merits. She thought it would be hard to defend the use of the endangerment finding because of its far-reaching effect on several sectors.
“That was a very strategic move on the part of the radical environmental community because it created a lot of headaches for the regulated community,” said Lummis.
Reporters Jean Chemnick, Zack Colman, Alex Guillén and Timothy Cama contributed.
