The Trump administration’s rush to overturn a 16-year-old climate science finding has scrambled EPA’s rulemaking process in ways that could come back to bite it in court.
Internal agency notes and presentation slides reviewed by POLITICO’s E&E News show that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin intends to sign off next week on the final policy and legal justifications for repealing the so-called endangerment finding and Biden-era climate rules for cars and trucks. Zeldin will make those decisions before agency staff have time to sift through all public comments — or complete the legally required regulatory impact analysis (RIA).
EPA’s political appointees told career officials that the RIA will have no bearing on the final regulatory package, according to notes from a career official in EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality. E&E News obtained the official’s notes through a third party granted anonymity to share the agency’s internal deliberations.
Slides from a Microsoft Teams meeting last week show that Zeldin will consider “options” for the final rule repeals at a briefing Tuesday, just eight days after the public comment period ended. EPA intends to conduct the regulatory impact analysis and review comments in October, before publishing the final rules in the Federal Register in mid-December.
