The Biden administration needed to pick up its pace to protect its regulatory agenda, senior EPA officials warned then-Administrator Michael Regan.
Otherwise, congressional Republicans could upend high-priority environmental protections after they left office and block the agency from acting in the future.
An internal memo from 2022, obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News just this month, offers a snapshot of the urgency then in EPA’s rulemaking process. The agency was struggling to align administration officials and complete vital air and climate regulations in time to keep them invulnerable from the Congressional Review Act.
Under scrutiny was the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the central regulatory hub that reviews and clears rules from across government.
