by Kevin Killough
Just The News
A panel of experts from the Heartland Institute, the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, the American Energy Institute, and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow say there are a dozen reasons to repeal the EPA’s endangerment finding. And there are multiple ways to make it happen, none of which will be easy.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin generated a huge buzz last month when he announced his intention to take 31 “historic actions” to roll back the Biden-Harris administration’s climate agenda.
Among the regulations he said would be targeted in this sweeping rollback is the “endangerment finding,” an Obama-era artifact that determined that carbon dioxide emissions pose a risk to health and human well-being. Under this determination, the EPA granted itself the authority to regulate those emissions and many climate policies stem from it. An endangerment finding establishes that a specific pollutant poses a threat to public health, which, under the Clean Air Act, allows the EPA to implement regulations to control emissions of that pollutant.
A panel of experts from the Heartland Institute, the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, the American Energy Institute, and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow say that repealing the finding is key to many goals of Trump’s “unleashing American energy” agenda. In an Earth Day 2025 report, they listed 12 reasons why the EPA should reverse the finding, including reindustrializing America, ending over-regulation, promoting agriculture, reducing government waste, and improving environmental protection.
Zeldin’s announcement didn’t provide details about what the priorities would be, nor was any timeline given for the regulatory rollbacks. Steve Milloy, senior legal fellow with the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute and publisher of “JunkScience.com,” said Wednesday in a webinar on the report that there are a couple of ways the EPA could go about repealing the finding.
The first is through the agency’s rulemaking process. A proposed rule would be published in the Federal Register, and it would be available for public comment. The agency would then draft a final rule. After Zeldin signs off on the draft, it would be published in the Federal Register.
The other way the rule could be repealed, Milloy explained, is under Trump’s “Directing The Repeal of Unlawful Regulations” executive order, which was signed last week. The order states that recent rulings by the Supreme Court recognized constitutional boundaries on the power of unelected bureaucrats. Yet, despite those rulings, according to the order, some unlawful regulations remain on the books…
