EPA said as recently as September that it planned to finalize its repeal of the so-called endangerment finding before 2025 ended.
But it looks like the Times Square ball will drop first.
Five industry advocates and former EPA officials who say they’ve spoken to agency staff in recent months told POLITICO’s E&E News that they now expect the rule to make an appearance in early 2026 — likely January. They were granted anonymity to discuss interactions with EPA staff.
The rule is a crucial part of the Trump administration’s deregulatory push. It would remove EPA’s 2009 finding that climate pollution threatens public health and welfare — which serves as the scientific foundation for most Clean Air Act climate rules. The final package would also rescind Biden-era emissions rules for motor vehicles.
The reason for the delay is unclear.
While EPA rulemaking staff were not furloughed during the recent government shutdown, which ended last week after 43 days, work stoppages at the White House or elsewhere in the administration might have contributed to the delays. Substantial staff departures throughout the year might also have been a factor. EPA has also just completed a structural overhaul.
“I think all of that is hard to disentangle from one another,” said one lobbyist who recently spoke with EPA officials.
EPA also received more than half-a-million public comments on its draft before a Sept. 22 deadline — with only 26,500 of those comments uploaded to the rule’s docket as of Wednesday. EPA must substantively respond to those comments as part of its final rulemaking, or risk handing challengers an opening to argue that the decision to repeal the finding and vehicle standards was predetermined.
“What the litigants will be looking for when the comments come out is whether or not the agency addressed each and every comment that was raised, particularly the ones that may be central to litigation,” said Joe Goffman, EPA’s air chief in the Biden administration. “And whether they addressed those comments with something more than hand waves.”
If EPA is seen to have cut procedural corners and prejudged the outcome of the rulemaking, that could introduce a “vulnerability that’s out of the ordinary,” said Goffman, who said he was hearing a January release was likely.
A January release date would still be a historically fast pace for such important rulemakings. EPA typically takes at least a year between a proposed and final rule — in large part because of the need to respond to so many public comments. But the Trump administration has pledged to complete its deregulatory agenda at a breakneck pace to ensure it can defend its policies all the way up to the Supreme Court.
EPA told E&E News that it is “following all of its statutory obligations under the Clean Air Act as the agency proceeds with the rulemaking process for its proposal to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding.”
“On September 22, the agency concluded the public comment period, which included four days of public hearings, and will now review and respond to comments,” it added.
President Donald Trump has made it clear since his first day in office that he intends to walk away from the 2009 endangerment finding. In an Inauguration Day order, Trump directed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to present the Office of Management and Budget with “recommendations” on scuttling the finding — even though the Clean Air Act states that Zeldin himself has sole responsibility for findings of endangerment.
Trump set Zeldin a 30-day deadline, and Zeldin met it with a Feb. 19 memo to OMB in which he said the Obama-era finding was no longer appropriate because of “developments in innovation, science, economics, and mitigation, as well as significant Supreme Court decisions.”
Less than one month after that memo was submitted, Zeldin announced plans to kill the finding — which he called the “holy grail of the climate agenda.” The draft rule was issued in July.
The endangerment finding and vehicle standards package isn’t the only rule to fall a little behind schedule. EPA also forecast that it would roll back Biden-era power plant carbon rules by the end of the year, but that final rule is now expected in January, too. The delays may not mean that much will change between the draft and final versions of those rules.
“I think it is always easier to put out proposals on time than it is to execute final rules on time,” the lobbyist said.
Jean Chemnick can be reached on Signal at jchemnick.01.
Reporter Kevin Bogardus contributed.
