EPA

Oct. 17 (UPI) — More than 20 states are suing the Trump administration for rescinding $7 billion in Congress-approved funds to equip nearly 1 million homes in low-income and disadvantaged communities with solar power.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, accuses the Environmental Protection Agency of breaching grant agreements by unilaterally terminated grants that had already been awarded.

“The administration is again targeting people struggling to get by in America, this time by gutting programs that help low-income households afford electricity, Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown said in a statement.

“Congress passed a solar energy program to help make electricity costs more affordable, but the administration is ignoring the law and focused on the conspiracy theory that climate change is a hoax.

The Solar for All program was established with the passage of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which included a $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund for the EPA to administer.

Using that Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, Congress appropriated $7 billion for the EPA to make grants, loans and financial assistance available for low-income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from zero-emission technologies, including solar power.

In April 2024, the EPA announced it had selected 60 applicants to receive the grants. By August of that year, the EPA had awarded program funds to states and other grant recipients.

But in August, the EPA, under the Trump administration, ended the program and reclaimed about 90% of the funds already awarded.

The 22 states, along with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, are accusing the Trump administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how administrative agencies operate, and the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine by canceling the program.

The plaintiffs allege that the EPA is using an “erroneous interpretation” of H.R. 1, which the Trump administration calls the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Congress in July, to justify the termination of the grants.

The states on Wednesday also filed a complaint in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to recover damages caused by the alleged breach of the grant agreements.

Earlier this month, a coalition of solar energy companies, labor unions and homeowners sued the EPA over the termination of the grants.

The shutdown of the U.S. government has brought work determined by the Trump administration to be “nonessential” to a halt across the country as thousands of federal employees have been furloughed and ordered not to do their jobs.

The shutdown — the first in six years — began late Tuesday and could last days if not weeks. Many employees may not return to work at all, as the White House’s Office of Management and Budget recently advised federal agencies to prepare for mass layoffs in the event of a shutdown.

While much of the fallout remains to be seen, federal agencies that deal with wildfires, weather and disaster response — including the U.S. Forest Service, the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency — expect to see some impacts.

Here’s what we know:

The U.S. Forest Service will shut down activities on more than 193 million acres of land across 46 states, including at least 154 national forests, according to the agency’s most recent contingency plan, published in September. Hundreds of recreational sites and facilities will be closed, while work on operations such as timber sales and restoration projects will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

The Forest Service — the largest federal firefighting entity in the country — will continue its work geared toward responding to and preparing for wildfires, according to the plan. However, the agency will reduce some work related to fire prevention, including prescribed burns and the treatment of vegetation to reduce fire risk.

What’s more, the shutdown will delay state grants for forest management and wildland fire preparedness; delay reimbursement for ongoing forest management work on non-federal lands; and may affect states’ ability to train firefighters and acquire necessary equipment, among other impacts, the plan says.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection works closely with the Forest Service to manage fire preparation and response. Cal Fire officials said it does not anticipate any impacts to its ability to respond to blazes, and that the agency is fully staffed.

However, effects may be seen when it comes to federal grant programs that support fire prevention work in the state. For example, private property owners in California who rely on federal funds to conduct vegetation reduction work or create defensible space on their land may have to “front the money themselves” while they await reimbursement said Jesse Torres, deputy chief of communications with Cal Fire.

“The other thing is there are a lot of unknowns,” Torres said. “We don’t know what this is going to look like — is it going to be two days, two weeks, two months?”

Other agencies that play key roles in California’s disaster response and preparation — including the National Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency — are largely deemed essential and will face fewer interruptions, according to their contingency plans.

“We are still operating in our core mission function and providing most of our normal services,” said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. That includes weather forecasts and extreme weather watches and warnings.

“The things that we do for public safety will continue as normal,” Kittell said.

About 84% of FEMA employees, meanwhile, are exempt from shutdown-related furloughs, according to its plan, which provides few additional details about which operations will cease or proceed.

Officials with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said FEMA staff have advised them that they will continue to make payments for existing disaster declarations made by President Trump, but there’s no guarantee that new or additional disaster declarations or funding will be made available.

FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund — the main source of funding for response and recovery efforts following major disasters — is also running low and is not likely to be replenished during the shutdown. It requires congressional approval for additional funds.

What’s more, FEMA, the National Weather Service and the Forest Service have already been affected by significant budget cuts and layoffs this year as part of the Trump administration’s larger reorganization of the federal government, which it says will help save taxpayers money.

These agencies, including NWS’ parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have lost thousands of employees to layoffs and buyouts and have experienced reduced operations, grant cancellations and the closure of offices and research arms.

The same is true for the EPA, which has undergone staff cuts and layoffs in addition to a considerable shift in its organizational priorities. The nation’s top environmental agency has spent the last several months loosening regulations that govern air and water quality, electric vehicle initiatives, pollution monitoring and greenhouse gas reporting, among other changes.

Experts said the shutdown could further weaken the EPA’s capabilities, as nearly all of its employees — about 90% — will be furloughed. While the EPA’s imminent disaster response work will continue, such as work on oil spills and chemical releases, longer-term efforts including research projects and facility inspections will halt, according to the agency.

Meanwhile, H.D. Palmer, a spokesman with the California Department of Finance, said impacts to the California EPA’s environmental programs should be minimal if the shutdown is brief, but that problems could arise if it drags on long enough to create backlogs and funding lapses.

The average length of government shutdowns over the last 50 years was seven days, Palmer said. However, he noted that the most recent federal shutdown from December 2018 to January 2019 — during Trump’s first term — lasted 35 days.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 (UPI) — As the United States faces shifts stemming from President Donald Trump‘s climate priorities and changes within the Environmental Protection Agency, Republican lawmakers held back-to-back hearings Tuesday to challenge climate intervention strategies and EPA enforcement under former President Joe Biden.

The House Oversight Committee hearings unfolded against the backdrop of major Trump administration moves to roll back environmental oversight.

Since January, the EPA has enacted changes that scrap emissions reporting and dismantle research offices, a signal Democratic lawmakers think the agency is prioritizing industry concerns and cost savings over transparency and scientific independence.

On Tuesday morning, the Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee met to discuss “Playing God with the Weather-A Disastrous Forecast,” which focused heavily on geoengineering and weather modification.

Later in the day, the Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement held a hearing on “From Protection to Persecution: EPA Enforcement Gone Rogue Under the Biden Administration,” which focused on instances of the EPA’s involvement in small businesses.

Chairman Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., opened the morning hearing by placing modern climate intervention in a long tradition of weather control, from Native American rain dances to Cold War era military projects, but warned today’s techniques of cloud seeding, carbon removal and blocking sunlight could pose unpredictable risks to human health and agriculture.

Greene argued that efforts to fight what she called a “climate change hoax” could lead to reckless global experiments.

“Some scientists think they can predict and control the impact of geoengineering, but even the best scientific models will never be able to capture all of God’s wonderful creation and nature’s mysteries,” she said.

Some lawmakers warned of unchecked experimentation with climate interventions, and the administration has signaled it will not pursue new regulatory frameworks for geoengineering research, but instead emphasize transparency and voluntary disclosure.

This was solidified when a video of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin was shared at the hearing. Zeldin explained his commitment to total transparency by promising to publicly release all geoengineering research so that “baseless conspiracies” will be met “head on.”

On Friday, the agency proposed ending a rule that required about 8,000 facilities to publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions — a program that provided transparency into the country’s biggest polluters.

In the afternoon, the Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement looked at the EPA in a different light, focusing on what Republican lawmakers cited as an aggressive policy during the Biden administration.

“Instead of pursuing massive industrial polluters who employ highly paid legal defense teams, EPA under the Biden administration chose to focus on mom-and-pop shops, and with the shops that have limited means to argue their case against the legal might of the Department of Justice backed by the EPA,” Chairman Clay Higgins, R-La, said.

He added: “Often, EPA’s enforcement actions involved raids on shops by teams of armed EPA agents who intimidated small businesses with threats of criminal prosecution.”

The committee showcased small businesses as examples of what GOP
members called EPA’s overreach, including one from Higgins’ home state of Louisiana.

Kory Willis, owner and founder of Power Performances Enterprise Inc. of Baton Rouge, who runs a performance tuning shop, described an almost decade-long legal fight that culminated in a consent decree that nearly put him out of business.

According to an EPA press release in 2022, federal prosecutors described Willis’ company as among the country’s leading developers of “delete tunes” — software that disables emissions controls in diesel trucks.

Court records show his company tuned more than 175,000 vehicles, moving over $1 million in products monthly at its peak, with emissions expected to release more than 100 million pounds of excess pollutants over the lifetime of those vehicles.

Another witness, Eric Schaeffer, former executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and EPA Office of Civil Enforcement director, subtly questioned Willis in his testimony.

“If you’re stuck behind a diesel truck, or a bunch of diesel trucks, in a traffic jam, and being showered with soot, live in an apartment next to a highway or the is city cooked by smog … don’t you have the right to breathe clean air? We used to think so,” Schaeffer said.

In its press release, the EPA said “Diesel emissions include multiple hazardous compounds and harm human health and the environment. Diesel emissions have been found to cause and worsen respiratory ailments such as asthma and lung cancer. One study indicated that 21,000 American deaths annually are attributable to diesel particulate matter.”

In March 2022, Willis and Power Performances Enterprise Inc. pleaded guilty to conspiracy and Clean Air Act violations, agreeing to pay $3.1 million in criminal fines and civil penalties and to stop selling defeat devices.

Schaeffer noted that the crackdown on defeat devices did not begin with the Biden administration.

“The launching of this enforcement initiative to crack down on the sale of these aftermarket devices started under the Trump administration in President Trump’s first term,” he said, pointing to EPA guidance at the time that warned of criminal penalties and urged companies to self-disclose violations.

Since then, federal courts have consistently upheld that the Clean Air Act covers aftermarket tampering devices.

Democratic members pushed back on the GOP positions, framing the hearing as not an examination of enforcement tools, but instead as part of the broader efforts for this administration to roll back environmental protections.

Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., highlighted the dismantling of environmental justice functions, warning that loosened oversight would leave vulnerable communities more exposed to soot, asthma and cancer.

For example, in July, the EPA announced it was dismantling its Office of Research and Development, the branch long responsible for the agency’s core scientific work, laying off many staff.

A new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions will replace it — a change that EPA officials under Trump say will streamline research and save nearly $750 million.

Together, the hearings and EPA’s actions indicated a present and future narrowing of the agency’s enforcement reach, pulling back climate transparency rules and reframing scientific research.

For nearly 20 years, thousands of industrial plants across the U.S. and California have been required to track and report the greenhouse gas pollution they spew into the atmosphere.

This month, the Trump administration moved to permanently end that program, which has long held bipartisan support, originating during the administration of George W. Bush. President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lee Zeldin, said that greenhouse gas reporting was expensive and burdensome, and that cutting the program would save American businesses up to $2.4 billion in regulatory costs.

But ending the requirement will make it harder for some state regulators to track climate progress, and for residents to know if their neighboring power plant or factory is reducing or increasing emissions.

“Measuring and reporting climate pollution is a critical step in reducing the deadly impacts of climate-driven extremes that cause more pollution, catastrophic weather events, health emergencies and deaths,” said Will Barrett, assistant vice president for nationwide clean air policy at the American Lung Assn. “Ignoring this reality is a deadly choice, and not one that EPA should be making for American families.”

The EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program requires about 8,000 power plants, oil refineries and other industrial facilities to report their output each year, representing about 90% of the country’s emissions. Greenhouse gases are by far the largest driver of climate change.

If finalized, the proposal to end the program would remove reporting obligations for most large facilities and all fuel and industrial gas suppliers, the EPA said. The move comes after various business groups have lobbied the administration for reduced regulatory requirements across numerous federal agencies.

Environmental groups said the announcement marks yet another blow from an administration that has already taken aim at many of the nation’s bedrock climate programs. The EPA this year has also proposed rolling back more than 30 rules and regulations that govern air and water quality while simultaneously promoting oil and gas production. Among the proposed repeals is the so-called endangerment finding, which establishes that fossil fuel emissions pose a threat to human health and the environment.

California, however, may be better prepared to weather the storm than other states.

The California Air Resources Board — a major state agency under the umbrella of the California EPA — administers its own state-level greenhouse gas reporting program that in some ways exceeds that of the federal one that is now on the chopping block.

CARB requires large stationary polluters that emit over 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent to report their emissions each year, compared with the minimum 25,000 metric tons at the EPA. The state’s program also includes additional reporting categories such as fuel suppliers and electricity importers that the EPA does not require.

“We’ve been taking climate change seriously for many years,” said John Balmes, a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley who also serves as CARB’s physician board member. “Knowing what greenhouse gas emissions there are in California is important to our planning mitigation strategy, so we have pretty strict reporting.”

Unlike the federal program, California’s system also goes beyond data collection and is directly tied to compliance obligations. That’s because CARB’s reporting is integrated with cap-and-trade, California’s signature climate program that sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions and allows large polluters to buy and sell unused emission allowances at quarterly auctions.

CARB uses the data reported by the state’s emitters to determine their allowance allocations. Each year, fewer allowances are created, lowering the total annual climate pollution in the state. The program is seen as critical to California meeting its ambitious climate goals — including 100% carbon neutrality by 2045 — and state lawmakers on Saturday agreed to extend cap-and-trade for an additional 15 years through that same year.

“It’s a global issue, but jurisdictions have to lead where they can, and California has long been a sub-national leader in climate change mitigation policy,” Balmes said.

For his part, Zeldin said the cut is justified by lack of regulations tied to the EPA’s reporting program. The federal program’s facility-level data is used to monitor national emission estimates and trends over time, identify opportunities for reductions, inform state and local policies, and aid communities in identifying nearby sources of pollution.

“The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to improve air quality,” Zeldin said in a news release. “Instead, it costs American businesses and manufacturing billions of dollars, driving up the cost of living, jeopardizing our nation’s prosperity and hurting American communities.”

California’s reporting program applies to more than 550 facilities, the largest of which include Pacific Gas & Electric, the Southern California Gas Co. and fossil fuel companies such as Chevron, Marathon and Phillips 66, according to state data from 2023, the most recent year available. Marathon’s Los Angeles Refinery — the largest refinery on the West Coast — was also high on the list.

Total emissions reported to the state that year were about 370 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, compared with 2.58 billion metric tons reported to the federal program that same year.

Under the EPA’s proposal, none of these entities would be required to report their emissions to the federal government. Though they would still be subject to state reporting, officials noted that pollution doesn’t stop at state lines.

“Requiring polluters to report their emissions is a critical way local governments can keep track of how industries in their cities are impacting people’s health,” read a statement from Kate Wright, executive director of Climate Mayors, a bipartisan group of nearly 350 mayors in the U.S. that includes L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.

“Air pollution kills about 135,000 Americans each year — and cities are working hard every day to lower that number,” Wright said. “They need access to that data to help them make the best decisions for their communities and ensure people across the country can breathe clean air free of toxic, cancer-causing chemicals. Without that accountability in place, emissions will go unchecked, and thousands of Americans will pay the price.”

While California is home to many nation-leading climate policies, the state has also long suffered from some of the worst air quality in the country — driven largely because of its vast numbers of cars, trucks, trains and cargo vessels and by topography that traps pollution in the state’s interior. Los Angeles has been ranked the nation’s smoggiest city 25 out of the last 26 years.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration took aim at some of the state’s regulatory muscle by moving to revoke its authority to set strict tailpipe emission standards under the EPA — an action that prompted California to respond with a lawsuit.

Trump has also moved to roll back Biden-era regulations designed to address mercury air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, and has offered large polluters two-year exemptions from key regulations governed by the Clean Air Act, which they can request by sending an email.

The Environmental Protection Network, a D.C.-based group composed of more than 650 former EPA employees, estimated that the repeal of these and other safeguards would lead to nearly 200,000 premature deaths through 2050 and cause more than 10,000 asthma attacks each day for U.S. children, among other outcomes.

The latest proposal to end the greenhouse gas reporting program is a “broadside against climate science and policies to protect human health,” said Barrett, of the American Lung Assn.

Such federal efforts, he added, “shine a spotlight on the importance of California’s ongoing climate and clean air leadership.”

EPA will initiate a public comment period to solicit input on its proposal to eliminate the greenhouse gas reporting program in the weeks ahead.

July 3 (UPI) — The Environmental Protection Agency suspended 144 employees on Thursday and began investigating their participation in signing a recent dissent letter accusing the Trump administration of politicizing the agency.

EPA officials justified the suspensions because the workers included their official titles in the letter signed by current and former 278 EPA employees.

The agency “has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,” EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch said in a written statement shared with The New York Times.

An official with the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238 local denounced the EPA worker suspensions.

The suspensions are “clearly an act of retaliation,” and the union will “protect our members to the full extent of the law,” AFGE Council 238 Vice President Justin Chen told The New York Times.

Among the letter’s signatories, 173 signed their names and 105 signed anonymously.

The declaration of dissent accuses the EPA’s leadership of engaging in “harmful deregulation” and was sent to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on Monday.

The letter also accuses the agency of promoting a culture of fear, undermining public trust and ignoring scientific consensus while benefiting what it calls “polluters.”

It says the EPA has politicized the agency and endangers public health “around the world.”

EPA officials notified the 144 suspended workers in emails that were circulated on Thursday.

The emails said each recipient was suspended with pay until July 17 while an administrative investigation into the matter proceeded, CNN reported.

The dissent letter was organized by the non-profit Stand Up for Science, which was founded in February.

Its founding was done in response to federal reductions in research funding, censorship of scientific work and “targeted attacks” on diversity, equity and inclusion.

The non-profit acknowledged the suspension of EPA workers for signing the dissent declaration.

“We’re honored to be chosen by the brave heroes at the EPA to host their public Declaration of Dissent here,” SUFS said in a statement posted on its website.

“We are also aware that some signatories have received emails placing them on administrative leave.”

Reporting from Washington — President Trump stepped up his attack on federal environmental protections Tuesday, issuing an order directing his administration to begin the long process of rolling back sweeping clean water rules that were enacted by his predecessor.

The order directing the Environmental Protection Agency to set about dismantling the Waters of the United States rule takes aim at one of President Obama’s signature environmental legacies, a far-reaching anti-pollution effort that expanded the authority of regulators over the nation’s waterways and wetlands.

The contentious rule had been fought for years by farmers, ranchers, real estate developers and others, who complained it invited heavy-handed bureaucrats to burden their businesses with onerous restrictions and fines for minor violations.

Obama’s EPA argued that such claims were exaggerated and misrepresented the realities of the enforcement process of a rule that promised to create substantially cleaner waterways, and with them healthier habitats for threatened species of wildlife.

The directive to undo the clean water initiative is expected to be closely followed by another aimed at unraveling the Obama administration’s ambitious plan to fight climate change by curbing power plant emissions.

“It is such a horrible, horrible rule,” Trump said as he signed the directive Tuesday aimed at the water rules. “It has such a nice name, but everything about it is bad.” He declared the rule, championed by environmental groups to give the EPA broad authority over nearly two-thirds of the waterways in the nation, “one of the worst examples of federal regulation” and “a massive power grab.”

While the executive orders are a clear sign of the new administration’s distaste for some of the highest profile federal environmental rules, they also reflect the challenge it faces in erasing them. Both the climate and the clean water rules were enacted only after a long and tedious process of public hearings, scientific analysis and bureaucratic review. That entire process must be revisited before they can be weakened. It could take years.

And environmental groups will be mobilized to fight every step of the way. “These wetland protections help ensure that over 100 million Americans have access to clean and safe drinking water,” California billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer said in a statement. “Access to safe drinking water is a human right, and Trump’s order is a direct violation of this right.”

The executive orders are compounded by the administration’s release of a budget blueprint that includes deep cuts at the EPA. Even if the process of changing the environmental rules is slow, the Trump administration will aim to hasten their demise by hollowing out the agencies charged with enforcing them.

At the same time, it is working with Congress to immediately kill some environmental protections under an obscure authority that applies to regulations enacted within the final months of the previous administration. A rule intended to limit water pollution from coal mining has already been killed by Congress, which is now weighing whether to jettison rules that force gas drilling operations on federal land to capture more of the toxic methane they emit.

Trump vowed Tuesday that he would continue to undermine the Obama-era environmental protections wherever he sees the opportunity, arguing they have cost jobs. “So many jobs we have delayed for so many years,” Trump said. “It is unfair to everybody.”

Many industries take issue with that interpretation. Tuesday’s order, for example, was met with a swift rebuke from sport fishing and hunting groups. They said the clean water rule has been a boon to the economy, sustaining hundreds of thousands of jobs in their industry.

“Sports men and women will do everything within their power to compel the administration to change course and to use the Clean Water Act to improve, not worsen, the nation’s waterways,” a statement from a half-dozen of the organizations said.

[email protected]

Follow me: @evanhalper

ALSO

Trump is set to tell a joint session of Congress about the ‘mess’ he says he inherited

Russia breaks with Trump in U.N. veto over Syria chemical arms

Trump says he’ll keep his promises. Here are some of his biggest from the campaign

LEOPOLD, Ind. — On the ceiling of Abbie Brockman’s middle school English classroom in Perry County, the fluorescent lights are covered with images of a bright blue sky, a few clouds floating by.

Outside, the real sky isn’t always blue. Sometimes it’s hazy, with pollution drifting from coal-fired power plants in this part of southwest Indiana. Knowing exactly how much, and what it may be doing to the people who live there, is why Brockman got involved with a local environmental organization that’s installing air and water quality monitors in her community.

“Industry and government is very, very, very powerful. It’s more powerful than me. I’m just an English teacher,” Brockman said. But she wants to feel she can make a difference.

In a way, Brockman’s monitoring echoes the reporting that the Environmental Protection Agency began requiring from large polluters more than a decade ago. Emissions from four coal-fired plants in southwest Indiana have dropped 60% since 2010, when the rule took effect.

That rule is now on the chopping block, one of many that President Trump’s EPA argues is costly and burdensome for industry.

But experts say dropping the requirement risks a big increase in emissions if companies are no longer publicly accountable for what they put in the air. And they say losing the data — at the same time the EPA is cutting air quality monitoring elsewhere — would make it tougher to fight climate change.

Rule required big polluters to say how much they are emitting

At stake is the Greenhouse Gas Reporting program, a 2009 rule from President Obama’s administration that affects large carbon polluters like refineries, power plants, wells and landfills. In the years since, they’ve collectively reported a 20% drop in emissions, mostly driven by the closure of coal plants.

And what happens at these big emitters makes a difference. Their declining emissions account for more than three-quarters of the overall, if modest, decline in all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions since 2010.

The registry includes places not usually thought of as big polluters but that have notable greenhouse gas emissions, such as college campuses, breweries and cereal factories. Even Walt Disney World in Florida, where pollution dropped 62% since 2010, has to report along with nearly 10,600 other places.

“We can’t solve climate change without knowing how much pollution major facilities are emitting and how that’s changing over time,” said Jeremy Symons, a former EPA senior climate advisor now at Environmental Protection Network, an organization of ex-EPA officials that monitors environmental policies. The group provided calculations as a part of the Associated Press’ analysis of impacts from proposed rule rollbacks.

Symons said some companies would welcome the end of the registry because it would make it easier to pollute.

Experts see a role for registry in cutting emissions

It’s not clear how much the registry itself has contributed to declining emissions. More targeted regulations on smokestack emissions, as well as coal being crowded out by cheaper and less polluting natural gas, are bigger factors.

But the registry “does put pressure on companies to … document what they’ve done or at least to provide a baseline for what they’ve done,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson, who heads Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists that tally national carbon emissions yearly.

Gina McCarthy, a former EPA administrator under Obama, said the registry makes clear how power plants are doing against each other, and that’s an inducement to lower emissions.

“It is money for those companies. It’s costs. It’s reputation. It’s been, I think, a wonderful success story and I hope it continues.”

The potential end of the reporting requirement comes as experts say much of the country’s air goes unmonitored. Nelson Arley Roque, a Penn State professor who co-authored a study in April on these “monitoring deserts,” said about 40% of U.S. lands are unmonitored. That often includes poor and rural neighborhoods.

“The air matters to all of us, but apparently 50 million people can’t know or will never know’’ how bad the air is, Roque said.

EPA seeks to cancel money to fund some air monitoring

The EPA is also trying to claw back money that had been earmarked for air monitoring, part of the termination of grants that it has labeled as targeting diversity, equity and inclusion. That includes $500,000 that would have funded 40 air monitors in a low-income and minority community in the Charlotte, N.C., area.

CleaneAIRE NC, a nonprofit that works to improve air quality across the state that was awarded the grant, is suing.

“It’s not diversity, equity and inclusion. It’s human rights,” said Daisha Wall, the group’s community science program manager. “We all deserve a right to clean air.”

Research strongly links poor air quality to diseases like asthma and heart disease, with a slightly less established link to cancer. Near polluting industries, experts say what’s often lacking is either enough data in specific locations or the will to investigate the health toll.

Indiana says it “maintains a robust statewide monitoring and assessment program for air, land and water,” but Brockman and others in this part of the state, including members of Southwestern Indiana Citizens for Quality of Life, aren’t satisfied. They’re installing their own air and water quality monitors. It’s a full-time job to keep the network of monitors up and running, fighting spotty Wi-Fi and connectivity issues.

Fighting industry is a sensitive subject, Brockman added. Many families depend on jobs at coal-fired power plants, and poverty is real. She keeps snacks in her desk for the kids who haven’t eaten breakfast.

“But you also don’t want to hear of another student that has a rare cancer,” she said.

Walling, Borenstein, Bickel and Wildeman write for the Associated Press. AP writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report from Washington.

Throughout his 2024 campaign for president, Donald Trump strongly and repeatedly denied any connection to Project 2025, the political platform document authored by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.

“I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump said during a debate with former Vice President Kamala Harris last September. He said he had not read the document, nor did he intend to.

Yet less than six months into his second stay in the White House, the president and his administration have initiated or completed 42% of Project 2025’s agenda, according to a tracking project that identified more than 300 specific action items in the 922-page document. The Project 2025 Tracker is run by two volunteers who “believe in the importance of transparent, detailed analysis,” according to its website.

Of all the action items, nearly a quarter are related to the environment through agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, and the departments of the Interior, Commerce, and Energy. Further, it seems the environment is a high priority for the Trump administration, which has initiated or completed about 70% of Project 2025’s environmental agenda — or roughly two-thirds — according to a Times analysis of the tracked items.

That includes Project 2025 action items like rolling back air and water quality regulations; canceling funds for clean energy projects and environmental justice grants; laying off scientists and researchers in related fields; and withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, an agreement among nearly 200 countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming.

When asked about this overlap, the administration continued to downplay any connection between the president and Project 2025.

“No one cared about Project 2025 when they elected President Trump in November 2024, and they don’t care now,” White House spokesman Taylor Rogers said in an email. “President Trump is implementing the America First agenda he campaigned on to free up wasteful DEI spending for cutting-edge scientific research, roll back radical climate regulations, and restore America’s energy dominance while ensuring Americans have clean air and clean water.”

Project 2025 refers to climate change as an “alarm industry” used to support a radical left ideology and agenda.

“Mischaracterizing the state of our environment generally and the actual harms reasonably attributable to climate change specifically is a favored tool that the Left uses to scare the American public into accepting their ineffective, liberty-crushing regulations, diminished private property rights, and exorbitant costs,” it says in a chapter about the EPA.

The author of that chapter, Mandy Gunasekara, served as the EPA’s chief of staff during Trump’s first administration. In the document, she recommends that the president undertake a number of actions to reform the EPA, including downsizing the agency, eliminating its Office of Environmental Justice and Civil Rights, and instituting a pause and review of grants — all of which Trump has done.

That same chapter also recommends that the president undermine California’s ability to set strict vehicle emission standards, which Trump vowed to do shortly after taking office; the Senate this week voted to revoke California’s rights to enact policy on the issue.

Gunasekara did not respond to a request for comment.

Matthew Sanders, acting deputy director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford, said these and other Project 2025-mandated moves could have far-reaching ramifications. He noted that 11 other states had chosen to follow California’s emission rules.

“What California does impacts what the rest of the nation does,” Sanders said. “In that sense … decisions about how to effectuate the Clean Air Act mandates are technology-forcing for much of the nation, and isolating California and eliminating its ability to do that will have profound consequences.”

The EPA isn’t the only agency affected by environmental policy changes mirrored in Project 2025.

The Trump administration has also directed the Department of Energy to expand oil and gas leasing in Alaska, eliminate considerations for upstream and downstream greenhouse gas emissions, and expedite the approval of liquefied natural gas projects, all of which were recommendations outlined in the document.

The Interior Department, which oversees U.S. national parks and public lands, has seen rollbacks of at least a dozen of President Biden’s executive orders that prioritized addressing climate change, as well as the termination of a Biden-era policy to protect 30% of U.S. land and water by 2030, also known as the 30×30 plan.

In April, Trump issued an executive order opening up 112.5 million acres of national forestland to industrial logging, as outlined on page 308 of Project 2025. The president said the move — which will touch all 18 of California’s national forests — is intended to increase domestic timber supplies, reduce wildfire risk and create jobs.

Sanders said actions on public lands are particularly consequential, not only for the extraction of resources but also for protected species and their habitats. The president has already taken Project 2025-mandated steps to lessen protections for marine life and birds, and has called for narrowing protections afforded by the Endangered Species Act.

He also expressed concern about Trump’s Jan. 20 proposal to revise or rescind National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations that require federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of their actions — a step recommended on page 60 of Project 2025.

While the president described NEPA and other rules as “burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations” that limit American jobs and stymie economic growth, Sanders said such framing is an oversimplification that can make the environment a scapegoat for other administrative goals.

“When we make these decisions in a thoughtful, careful, deliberate way, we actually can have jobs and economic development and environmental protection,” he said. “ I don’t think that those things are inherently opposed, but the administration, I think, gets some mileage out of suggesting that they are.”

Indeed, the Commerce Department, which houses the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service and other climate-related entities, has also seen changes that follow Project 2025’s playbook. The document describes the agency as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”

In recent months, the president has made moves to “break up” NOAA — a directive also found on page 674 of the Project 2025 document — including laying off hundreds of staffers, closing several offices and proposing significant cuts to its research arm.

The administration has similarly taken Project 2025-recommended steps to shift disaster relief responsibilities away from the federal government and onto the states; loosen energy efficiency standards for appliances; and rescind USAID policies that address climate change and help countries transition away from fossil fuels, among others.

These are some of nearly 70 environmental action items identified in the Project 2025 Tracker, of which 47 are already completed or in progress less than 150 days into President Trump’s second term.

Tracking the administration’s progress is a somewhat subjective process, in part because many of the directives have come through executive orders or require multiple steps to complete. Additionally, many goals outlined in Project 2025 are indirect or implied and therefore not included in the tracker, according to Adrienne Cobb, one of its creators.

Cobb told The Times she read through the entire document and extracted only “explicit calls to action, or recommendations where the authors clearly state that something should be done.”

“My goal was for the tracker to reflect the authors’ intentions using their own words wherever possible,” she said. “By focusing on direct language and actionable items, I tried to create a list that’s accurate and accountable to the source material.”

Though the Trump administration continues to deny any connection to Project 2025, the creators of the massive tome were always clear about their presidential intentions.

“This volume — the Conservative Promise — is the opening salvo of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts wrote in its forward. “Its 30 chapters lay out hundreds of clear and concrete policy recommendations for White House offices, Cabinet departments, Congress, and agencies, commissions, and boards.”

WASHINGTON — A proposal by the Trump administration to reorganize the Environmental Protection Agency targets divisions that house its climate change offices as well as Energy Star, a widely popular program designed to help lower energy costs for American households.

A chart of the proposed reorganization reviewed by The Times on Tuesday showed plans for vast changes to the Office of Air and Radiation, where the programs are currently held, among several other divisions. “EPA is delivering organizational improvements to the personnel structure that will directly benefit the American people and better advance the agency’s core mission, while Powering the Great American Comeback,” the agency said.

Energy Star was at risk during the first Trump administration, when the EPA last faced an exodus of scientific talent, but ultimately survived. The program sets energy efficiency guidelines for the manufacturers of household products such as refrigerators, heat pumps and dishwashers, which then display the program’s logo if they meet its standards.

Earlier Tuesday, CNN and the Washington Post reported that the proposed restructuring would specifically eliminate Energy Star.

“Trump’s plan to end the Energy Star program is a blow to American families and businesses everywhere,” Ed Markey, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, said on social media in response to the news. “This program has saved $500 billion in energy costs over the past 30 years. Energy efficiency isn’t just an environmental solution — it’s an economic one.”

Plans to eliminate the program could pose political challenges to a president who ran for office, in part, on lowering energy costs. “We intend to slash prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months,” Donald Trump said on the campaign trail last year about Americans’ energy bills.

EPA staff members are undergoing a second round of deferred resignation offers, similar to buyouts, alongside their colleagues across several other government agencies. It is likely the last chance for career staff to leave willingly. A reorganization will allow for the government to implement layoffs with greater discretion.

Changes at the Office of Air and Radiation could alter or compromise other critical programs within the division, such as the agency’s efforts to monitor trends in air pollution throughout the country and provide energy resources to state, local and tribal governments, helping them improve local air quality and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

But Lee Zeldin, President Trump’s EPA administrator, said in a video released May 2 that a new office to be formed in its place is intended to work “with — not against — state, local and tribal air permitting agencies to improve processing of state implementation plans and resolving air permitting concerns.”

The energy star logo is displayed on a freezer box.

(Joshua A. Bickel / Associated Press)

“We owe it to the American taxpayer to be as efficient as possible,” said Zeldin, who characterized the restructuring proposal as an effort to bring the EPA down to Reagan-era staffing levels, saving $300 million a year by 2026. “With these organizational improvements, we can assure the American people that we are dedicated to EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment.”

The Air and Radiation division also maintains the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, the primary body that monitors vehicle emissions throughout the country and sets national fuel efficiency standards — an office that often finds itself at odds with the California Air Resources Board.

And yet, perhaps the most dramatic cuts may be to the agency’s main office devoted to understanding, tracking and combating climate change, which is housed under the same division set for a shuffle.

The restructuring, if implemented, would go further in rolling back the U.S. fight against climate change than Trump did in his first term, when his EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler, cast doubt on the threats posed by a warming planet.

In April, the Trump administration fired a large group of scientists producing a major quadrennial U.S. report on climate change, called the National Climate Assessment, and moved to slash research funding at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House last week.

(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

Zeldin has previously said he plans to cut “at least” 65% of the agency’s total spending, after cutting back its travel costs and office space, and placing the majority of its Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights staff on leave.

“We will pursue efficiencies,” Zeldin said. “The American people can rest assured knowing that, with our EPA team, there will be zero tolerance for wasting even a penny of your taxpayer dollars.”