In a long-anticipated move, President Trump on Thursday announced he was doing away with what is known as the Endangerment Finding used in determining greenhouse gas emission standards.
The Endangerment Finding has been in place since 2009, determining half a dozen greenhouse gasses regarded via the Clean Air Act as dangerous to human health.
“This was all a scam, a giant scam,” Trump said of the regulations, declaring that those regulations have had “nothing to do with public health.”
The Trump administration has also said that it is moving toward repealing rules regulating vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.
In a statement, Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the Endangerment Finding has been the source of 16 years of “consumer choice restrictions and trillions of dollars in hidden costs for Americans.”
Zeldin added that in getting rid of the Endangerment Finding, the Trump Administration was enacting the “single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history on behalf of American taxpayers and consumers.”
The Endangerment Finding has been referenced as the single most important legal basis for nearly all Clean Air Act regulations regarding power plants and motor vehicles, among other sources of pollution.
The White House action, notes the site Politico, could not only ease the EPA’s deregulatory efforts, but also “make it harder for future administrations to implement climate rules under the same statutory authorities.”
In revoking the Endangerment Finding, said Loren Blackford, executive director of the Sierra Club, Trump is focusing on “helping corporate polluters profit.”
Blackford also asserted in a statement that the Trump Administration is “making it their official policy that our lives, our health, and our future are of no importance to them.”
“This decision makes it abundantly clear that Trump is willing to make our families sicker and less safe, all to benefit a few billionaire polluters,” charged Alex Witt, a senior advisor with the advocacy group Climate Power.
Said West Virginia Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito in a press release: “This repeal will have a transformational impact on my home state of West Virginia, as these efforts reverse the harmful Democrat attacks on affordable, gas-powered vehicles that West Virginians have endured for far too long.”
Several environmental groups have said that they plan to challenge the White House’s Endangerment Finding ruling in court.
February 13, 2026
By Garry Boulard
Photo courtesy of Pixabay
