WASHINGTON, DC, March 18, 2025 – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has announced 31 actions the agency has taken to deregulate the American system of environmental protections across the country. Zeldin says he took these actions “to advance President Trump’s Day One executive orders and power the Great American Comeback.”
Zeldin affirmed EPA’s commitment to “commonsense policies that prioritize the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment, while fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower cost of living for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to states to make their own decisions.”
Here is what Administrator Zeldin had to say about deregulating the U.S. environment in a March 12 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:
“Yesterday [March 12, 2025] was the most consequential day of deregulation in American history. Alongside President Trump, we announced that the Environmental Protection Agency will take 31 actions to advance his day-one executive orders and power the Great American Comeback.”
“By overhauling massive rules on the endangerment finding, the social cost of carbon and similar issues, we are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age. These actions will roll back trillions of dollars in regulatory costs and hidden taxes. As a result, the cost of living for American families will decrease, and essentials such as buying a car, heating your home and operating a business will become more affordable. Our actions will also reignite American manufacturing, spreading economic benefits to communities.”
The December 2009 endangerment finding by then EPA Administrator Lisa Perez Jackson, an American chemical engineer, concluded that planet-warming pollutants like carbon dioxide and methane threaten public health and the welfare of current and future generations.
“The overwhelming scientific evidence on which this finding was based has only become more robust and irrefutable since then,” Jason Rylander, legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said.
The endangerment finding forms the core basis of federal climate action. A court battle over the decision to tear it down is looming.
“The Trump administration’s ignorance is trumped only by its malice toward the planet,” Rylander said. “Come hell and high water, raging fires and deadly heatwaves, Trump and his cronies are bent on putting polluter profits ahead of people’s lives. This move won’t stand up in court. We’re going to fight it every step of the way.”
The United States is the second largest carbon polluter in the world, after China, and the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases.
The endangerment finding of 2009, decided during the Obama administration, underpins federal regulations that have reduced climate-damaging pollution from cars and trucks, intended to save seven billion tons of emissions by 2032. It also supports regulations reducing pollution from oil and gas production and power plants under the Clean Air Act.
Eliminating the finding calls these and other future critical climate protections into question.
Administrator Zeldin told the WSJ, “The EPA will continue to protect human health and the environment while unleashing America’s full potential. That means reconsidering the regulations that have restricted every sector of the economy, such as the illegal Clean Power Plan 2.0, Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, and Particulate Matter 2.5 levels.”
Zeldin said on March 12, “President Trump promised to kill the Clean Power Plan in his first term, and we continue to build on that progress now. In reconsidering the Biden-Harris rule that ran afoul of Supreme Court case law, we are seeking to ensure that the agency follows the rule of law while providing all Americans with access to reliable and affordable energy.”
In the WSJ op-ed he wrote, “Under President Trump’s guidance, the EPA also has ended the electric-vehicle mandate that threatened to destroy America’s auto industry and made cars cost more. Instead of forcing Americans to buy expensive vehicles they neither want nor can keep powered up, we are restoring choice to consumers and bringing automaking jobs back home in line with our Great American Comeback initiative. This commitment to our manufacturing base contrasts with Biden administration policies that shipped jobs overseas.”
But the move to electric vehicles and the charging stations that support them continues to grow across the United States.
On the day before Zeldin announced his rollback of federal government EV support, EVgo Inc., one of the nation’s largest providers of public fast charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, and Toyota Motor North America announced the opening of the first DC fast charging stations in Baldwin Park and Sacramento, California, built through Toyota’s Empact vision. The new co-branded stations, owned and operated by EVgo, each serve up to eight vehicles at once and feature 350kW fast chargers.
“Availability of charging is essential as consumers consider buying or leasing an EV,” Executive Vice President of Growth at EVgo, Scott Levitan, said. “As automakers offer more electric vehicle choices, EVgo will continue deploying fast chargers for current and prospective EV drivers. Collaboration with automakers has been core to our expansion over the last several years, and EVgo is grateful for the continued support from Toyota.”
And also on March 11, in Santa Monica, California, Greenlane, a provider of public commercial EV charging infrastructure, unveiled its branded digital technology suite as part of the ongoing development of the I-15 Commercial EV Charging Corridor. The online mobile app and fleet management portal, will be rolled out in phases to expedite the delivery of complete EV charging solutions for commercial and public users.
“As heavy-duty transportation continues to electrify, we need to address fleet manager and driver pain points,” Patrick Macdonald-King, CEO of Greenlane, said. “One of our visions has long been to provide the truck stop of the future, and a big part of that starts with seamless planning and logistics technology and connecting these technologies to existing systems companies already have in place via Application Programming Interfaces, APIs. This launch reflects what’s in store for the industry as we help shape the future of freight travel, making the transition easier.”
But Zeldin views the situation differently. “Energy dominance stands at the center of America’s resurgence,” he wrote in the WSJ op-ed. “By reconsidering rules that throttled oil and gas production and unfairly targeted coal-fired power plants, we are ensuring that American energy remains clean, affordable, and reliable. This isn’t about abandoning environmental protection – it’s about achieving it through innovation and not strangulation.”
“The EPA’s commitment to permit reform cannot be overstated,” Zelden declared. “By cutting through red tape and resolving the backlog of state and tribal implementation plans, we are creating an environment where businesses can thrive and infrastructure can be built. This is how America will become the artificial-intelligence capital of the world – by removing barriers to ingenuity and investment and advancing cooperative federalism.”
“Our work to end Good Neighbor Plan emission requirements and work in partnership with the 19 states whose air-quality plans were rejected by the previous administration recognizes that states and communities know best how to address their environmental challenges.”
The Good Neighbor Plan is a set of rules issued by the EPA in March 2023 during the Biden administration. The plan outlines rules and regulations that power plants and other industrial sectors in 23 states must follow to secure significant reductions in ozone-forming emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx). The Plan seeks to prevent emissions created in upwind states from traveling to downwind states during the ozone season from May 1 to September 30. The Biden EPA estimated that this action would result in cleaner air and better health for millions of people in downwind communities.
The Trump officials see greening the planet as a scam. Zeldin wrote in the WSJ, “Today marks the death of the Green New Scam. The EPA recognizes that environmental protection and economic prosperity aren’t mutually exclusive goals. Under President Trump’s leadership, we are recommitting to the core American values of innovation, growth, exceptionalism and opportunity.”
“Critics may claim that these changes signal a retreat from environmental protection. Nothing could be further from the truth,” Zeldin promised. “Under the Trump administration, the EPA’s core mission remains safeguarding human health and the environment. The difference lies in how we achieve these goals – through partnership rather than prescriptive bureaucracy, through collaboration rather than regulation.”
“The EPA’s approach is balanced and sustainable as we enter America’s Golden Age. We are protecting the environment not by shutting down energy production but by making it cleaner and more efficient. We are creating jobs not by government mandate but through policies that advance opportunity and the entrepreneurial spirit that has always driven American prosperity.”
“These commonsense policies preserve our environment and work for all Americans,” Zeldin declared. As we unleash American energy, revitalize domestic manufacturing, cut costs for families, and restore the rule of law, we do so with the firm belief that America’s greatest days lie ahead.”
Featured image: President Donald Trump appointed Lee Zeldin, a Republican who served as a Congressman from Long Island, New York (2015-2023), to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. November 24, 2024 (Photo by Shaleah Craighead, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
