Trump didn’t target EPA climate rules by name. Here’s why.

By Jean Chemnick | 01/22/2025 06:16 AM EST

Some of the biggest Biden-era regulations did not appear in the wave of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump. It might not matter.

President Donald Trump signs an executive order on Monday.

President Donald Trump signs an executive order Monday. Experts said the absence of the environmental regulations' names in Trump's first wave of executive orders would not hinder his efforts to roll them back. Matt Rourke/AP

President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive orders didn’t name some of the highest-profile climate rules that his administration could target for elimination.

But that doesn’t mean they’re safe.

The Inauguration Day directive on energy instructs Trump’s Cabinet members, including his nominee to lead the EPA, Lee Zeldin, to scour the federal code for regulations and policies that “impose an undue burden” on traditional energy industries like oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear power. It gives them until Feb. 19 to confer with the White House on ways to “suspend, revise, or rescind” those standards — a tight timeline because those nominees still face Senate confirmation.

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But the executive order doesn’t say which standards the Trump team has in mind. That’s a departure from 2017, when Trump used an executive order to direct then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to target former President Barack Obama’s power plant carbon rules.

Former President Joe Biden also issued an order in January 2021 that kick-started a review of scores of Trump-era actions, including EPA standards for carbon emissions at power plants and oil and gas infrastructure.

Trump might not be done issuing executive orders on energy. But the White House may never put all of the regulatory targets that the EPA landing team has identified in one EO. Some obvious ones include Biden-era rules on carbon emissions at power plants, strict guidelines for emissions reporting, requirements for monitoring and repairing oil and gas leaks, implementing fees for methane releases, and curbs on heat-trapping coolants.

Experts said the absence of the regulations’ names in Trump’s first wave of orders would not hinder his efforts to roll them back. That’s because EOs are mainly messaging documents, not vehicles for policy.

“I think the executive orders, more than anything else, are a way for an administration to sort of tout its agenda,” said Jeff Holmstead, who headed the EPA air office during the George W. Bush administration and is now a partner with Bracewell.

Holmstead said the Trump team may have opted not to list regulatory targets because the outgoing Biden administration left it with a glut of rules that met the criteria of being costly and burdensome to industry.

“I almost wonder if they just wanted a little bit more time to get their arms around it,” he said.

Kevin Minoli, a partner at the law firm Alston & Bird who previously served as EPA acting general counsel, said the administration might want officials to keep an open mind, at least for now.

“One reason that you might not include a list of specific regulatory action is that it inevitably limits the focus of the agencies to those rules,” he said. “And it may be that they wanted to cast a wider net.”

The order instructs agencies to notify the Department of Justice when it finds rules that meet Trump’s criteria. Government lawyers will then ask courts to “stay or otherwise delay further litigation” on those rules until the agency has time to act. Litigation is in progress on a host of EPA rules, including Biden-era standards for fossil fuel power plants.

Minoli said it was typical for agencies to communicate with DOJ about their regulatory reviews, and for DOJ, in turn, to ask courts to hold any ongoing challenges to existing rules in abeyance while agencies work on a replacement. That didn’t require a White House directive.

Courts usually grant requests for a temporary stay, he said. But the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo last year means it could be harder for the new administration to change rules if it alters how agencies read the underlying law. The case weakened agencies’ authority to impose rules that weren’t clearly required by Congress.

“It used to be well understood that administrations could change their interpretation of ambiguous statutory interpretation,” said Minoli.

But following Loper Bright, if courts have already upheld a rule that used a different reading of the law, the new administration might be stuck with it.

“The agency is still bound by the court’s decision, even though it changed administrations,” said Minoli.

This story also appears in Energywire.