by Dmitri Bolt
Townhall.com
The Trump administration is set to repeal an Obama-era scientific finding that serves as the legal basis for federal greenhouse-gas regulation, marking the largest rollback of regulations in U.S. history.
“This amounts to the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin added in an interview.
While the move would not directly affect emissions standards for power plants or oil and gas facilities, the rollback is expected to affect vehicle emissions standards and could open the door for the Trump administration to target environmental regulations more broadly…
Milloy, a former Trump EPA Transition Team Advisor and Senior Fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, argued that the next step should be overturning Massachusetts v. EPA, which allowed the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. By overturning the Supreme Court decision, the Trump administration can ensure that the EPA is not allowed to simply regulate as it sees fit, and it must instead go through Congress, and in turn, the American people.
“Rescinding the endangerment finding is great, but it’s not the ballgame. Not only does the rescission have to stand up in court, it must result in the overturning of the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, where the Court wrongly ruled that EPA could regulate greenhouse gases even though Congress did not expressly authorize it,” Miloy said. “The 2022 SCOTUS decision in West Virginia v. EPA held that EPA must have express congressional authorization for major regulatory programs. So, endangerment finding litigation must result in West Virginia v. EPA trumping Massachusetts v. EPA. Even if the Trump EPA wins in court with respect to rescinding the endangerment finding, without also overturning Massachusetts v. EPA, the next Democrat-run EPA will simply re-issue the endangerment finding, and all the Trump EPA’s great work will have been erased.”
