EPA Endangerment Finding Repeal Goes to White House for Final Review

Energy (DOE)Environmental Protection Agency Federal Agency/Executive Branch Federal Litigation Federal Regulation Office of Management and Budget (OMB)Opinions Policy Public Comment Requests Closed White House

January 10, 2026

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by Alex Guillén (Politico Pro) ... As proposed in July, EPA argued that the Clean Air Act does not give it the authority to address climate change because of the global nature of greenhouse gas emissions. By revoking the 2009 endangerment finding that concluded greenhouse gas emissions do pose a threat to public health and welfare, the agency would also end all regulation of carbon emissions from new vehicles and make it virtually impossible to regulate emissions from most other sectors.

Environmentalists and Democratic-led states have assailed the proposed rule and are expected to mount legal challenges once it is finalized. READ MORE

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Excerpt from E&E News Climatewire: EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is poised to finalize a rule that would weaken the agency's authority to regulate climate pollution. -- Jenny Kane/AP

EPA is on the verge of finalizing its sweeping rollback of the endangerment finding — the scientific cornerstone that allows it to regulate climate pollution — in a move that would help President Donald Trump topple multiple rules aimed at forcing American industries to reduce their carbon emissions.

It stands to be a game changer for a president who has rejected the basic tenets of climate science as he works to accelerate the production of fossil fuels, the main source of pollution that has led global temperatures to reach levels never seen before by modern humans. Repealing the 2009 finding would eliminate the regulatory authority that EPA relied on to enact climate rules on sources such as power plants and vehicles, easing Trump’s ability to revoke them — and making it harder for future presidents to replace them.

Yet the repeal will almost certainly face court challenges. Whether EPA’s action is successful could hinge on three things: its legal rationale for revoking the finding, its treatment of the scientific record and the strength of its regulatory analysis and responses to public comments. Those factors will come to light when the agency releases its final rule, expected within weeks.

“If the courts decide that this is valid, then … you can definitely see a scenario where you can wipe out a lot of the rules on the books that have been justified using the endangerment finding,” said Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, an advocacy group that opposes regulations. “That’s kind of a big deal.”

The proposed repeal is under review by the White House, along with a rollback of Biden-era climate standards for cars and trucks. The rules were submitted to the Office of Management and Budget last week and are expected to be released together in January or February.

Here are three things that could determine whether the repeal succeeds or fails, according to lawyers and environmental advocates.

Law and science, or just law?

The biggest question about the final repeal is what it will say about climate science.

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But last summer’s proposal also took a swipe at established climate science through what it called an “alternative rationale” for the repeal. It argued that the Obama EPA based the endangerment finding on projections and empirical data and analyses that were “unduly pessimistic” about the atmosphere’s sensitivity to spiking greenhouse gas emissions and the dangers of warming for the public.

To support this contention, EPA relied overwhelmingly on a report written by five climate contrarians assembled by Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

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Public comments

Holmstead (Jeff Holmstead, who served as EPA’s air chief under President George W. Bush), an attorney at Bracewell LLP, said that dropping the so-called alternative rationale based on climate science from the final rule could stem from practical considerations. The draft rule’s public comment period closed in late September, and EPA hasn’t had time to process and meaningfully respond to all the public criticism it received about its scientific assertions.

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The agency reports having received 572,000 public comments on the draft by the September 22 deadline, but it has uploaded only 31,000.

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One rule to end all rules

Lawyers and advocates will also search the final rule for any intel about how EPA sees its repeal impacting regulations beyond the motor vehicle sector. The endangerment finding was issued under Section 202 of the Clean Air Act, which covers car and truck pollution.

The proposed rule asserts that EPA sees the endangerment repeal as only applying to motor vehicle sector regulations.

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But there isn’t a separate endangerment finding for stationary sources of climate pollution.

Since 2009, the finding on climate pollution from new motor vehicles has legally supported standards for oil and gas methane and power plant carbon. It could do the same in the future for landfill methane and carbon from other industries.

“It’s incorporated by reference in all of the other rules,” said Meghan Greenfield, an attorney with Jenner & Block LLP. “So, if you set that aside, it’s unclear how any of them can stand on their own.”

She said she’ll be looking for indications within the final rule about how scrapping the endangerment finding could cascade into repealing other rules.

“Does it by its own operation, affect the other standards outside of motor vehicles, like power plants, landfills, oil and gas?” she said. “Or, if the EPA were to change direction on those, how much extra effort does it require for them to repeal those other rules?” READ MORE

Excerpt from E&E News Climatewire: When Zeldin traveled with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to Ohio and Michigan last Friday to highlight new policies they claimed would help cash-strapped consumers and U.S. carmakers save money, advocates saw it as a potential tipoff.

Green groups organized protests and reporter briefings to push back against the repeal, which will make it harder for future administrations to regulate heat-trapping pollution from the likes of cars, airplanes and landfills.

The officials’ Midwest trip was a false alarm. But environmentalists didn’t know that until after they had organized a tactical response.

Climate Action Campaign, a coalition of environmental groups, planned to protest the rollback in front of EPA headquarters in Washington. A coalition spokesperson, Gabrielle Levy, said that plan still stands for whenever the repeal finally drops.

Levy said the swing through the Rust Belt, which included stops at Ford and Stellantis plants, was a potential backdrop for the repeal because it’s tied to environmental rollbacks for cars and trucks.

EPA and the White House have stakeholder meetings scheduled through Feb. 5 to discuss the endangerment finding — which could indicate that the rule won’t be released until after then.

“The OMB‘s outside stakeholder meeting schedule is usually a reliable, but not ironclad, predictor of when they expect review to be completed,” said Joe Goffman, EPA’s air chief under former President Joe Biden. While EPA sometimes cancels a meeting to bring a rule out early, he said, it’s “not been that frequent.”

But the Trump administration often abandons norms.

“What we’ve found with rules so far this administration is that they don’t always keep these meetings,” said Levy, whose group is scheduled to meet with the Office of Management and Budget and EPA about the rule Monday. “They do it when they do it.”

The agency has been successful in preventing leaks on both substance and process. Three former EPA officials attribute that in part to the fact that very few career officials are believed to be working on the repeal.

“People aren’t even really sure who’s preparing it,” said one former official who was granted anonymity to talk about internal discussions.

A team of career lawyers and technical experts would usually be involved, but only a few attorneys with the Office of General Counsel are known to be working on the rulemaking, the former officials said. It’s unclear if any agency experts on climate science are involved in the process.

The accelerated effort to kill the endangerment finding contrasts sharply with the one that led to its creation in 2009.

While the Obama EPA finalized the declaration that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare — which made it possible to regulate climate pollution under the Clean Air Act — technical staff began working on it years earlier under the George W. Bush administration.

“It wasn’t just writing the finding,” said Benjamin DeAngelo, a former EPA official who served as the technical lead for the 2009 finding. “It was the accompanying technical document that brought together all the science. And then there were 11 volumes of responses to comments that we did very thoroughly. It was definitely one of the most intense work experiences of my career.” READ MORE