A top White House regulatory czar is shoring up a final rule gutting the bedrock of U.S. climate rules even as the administration’s assault on climate science comes under legal fire, people familiar with the process said Thursday.
The deliberative work happening behind closed doors at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs pits the administration’s desire to quickly scrap EPA’s endangerment finding, which underpins many of the agency’s climate change regulations, against the imperative to ensure those actions can survive legal scrutiny. The attempt to repeal the finding is shaping up as the Trump administration’s single-biggest — and riskiest — swing at the federal government’s ability to fight rising temperatures linked to fossil fuels.
Success would deliver a long-sought win to hard right conservatives by obliterating EPA’s authority to issue rules they have likened to command-and-control diktats over the entire economy. But failure would jeopardize President Donald Trump’s goal of eradicating U.S. climate regulations before his second term ends.
EPA originally aimed to finalize repeals of the endangerment finding and all vehicle climate rules by December 2025, an ambitious target that has run up against speed bumps.
