Trump Repeals Landmark Legal Policy Underpinning Key Climate Rules

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February 12, 2026

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by Jake Spring, Ambrosia Wojahn and Brady Dennis (Washington Post) Nearly 17 years after the Environmental Protection Agency declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten the public’s health and welfare, the agency on Thursday rescinded the landmark legal opinion underpinning a wave of federal policies aimed at climate change.

The agency issued its “endangerment finding” in 2009, concluding that the government had a sound legal basis to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. In scrapping the policy this week, the EPA will seek to erase limits on emissions from cars, power plants and other industries that release the vast majority of the nation’s planet-warming pollution.

At an event at the White House on Thursday afternoon, alongside EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, President Donald Trump called the decision “the single largest deregulatory action in American history.” He added, “And I think we can add the words, ‘by far.’”

The announcement represents more than just the latest in a litany of President Donald Trump’s rollback of climate and environmental safeguards. Rather, it marks the culmination of years of effort by conservative and industry groups to undermine the cornerstone of federal rules that limit greenhouse gases — and to hamper future administrations from putting them back in place after Trump.

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The agency (EPA) later asserted that the science supporting the endangerment finding was “robust, voluminous, and compelling.”

As recently as late 2023, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case from two groups challenging the endangerment finding, after the litigation also had been dismissed in a lower federal court, which called the plaintiffs’ arguments “flawed” and “without merit.”

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Conservatives and industry groups have praised the move, particularly the elimination of restrictions on motor vehicle emissions, saying it will allow automakers to produce cars that consumers want to buy rather than dictating that Americans purchase an increasing number of electric vehicles.

Jeff Holmstead, a partner at the law and lobbying firm Bracewell, and who served as head of EPA’s air office under President George W. Bush, said that for now, the only legal impact will be to immediately eliminate greenhouse gas standards on the nation’s cars and trucks.

But, he added, “If the legal reasoning that they proposed to rely on for revoking the endangerment finding is upheld in court, no future EPA will be able to regulate CO2 emissions.”

Environmental groups vowed that the judicial system is exactly where the latest Trump action will soon head.

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The EPA issued its endangerment finding after the Supreme Court ruled in a 2007 case known as Massachusetts v. EPA that the agency had the authority to regulate carbon dioxide, methane and other climate pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

But the conservative shift on the Supreme Court since then could bolster the administration’s chances of a favorable ruling if the issue comes before it again. In 2022, for instance, the court struck down Obama-era regulations of power-plant emissions.

When the EPA proposed repealing the endangerment finding last year, the agency cited a report produced by the Energy Department questioning the global scientific consensus on climate change. Scientists said that report was riddled with errors and misleading information, while environmental groups successfully sued, with a U.S. district court ruling that the secretive way in which the Energy Department assembled climate skeptics to write the report violated federal law.

White House officials had delayed finalizing the endangerment repeal over fears that the science and economic analysis used to justify the change were not strong enough to hold up in court, people familiar with the discussions told The Washington Post in January before the ruling.

Zeldin and allied conservatives have largely avoided engaging with the science behind the opinion, focusing instead on narrower legal and economic arguments, including that Congress intended the Clean Air Act to regulate toxic air pollution and did not envision regulating greenhouse gases.

“When Congress wants the executive branch to regulate greenhouse gases, it should pass clear legislation to do just that,” said Tom Pyle, president of American Energy Alliance, a conservative advocacy group. READ MORE

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Excerpt from CNBC: The Sierra Club, the largest environmental group in the U.S., said Trump has formalized “climate denialism as official government policy.”

It warned that eliminating greenhouse gas standards not only imperils the public, but will expose industries to a flood of litigation. The Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision in 2011 that companies cannot be sued under federal common law over greenhouse emissions because regulation of these emissions had been delegated to the EPA. READ MORE

Excerpt from Associated Press: The EPA also said it will propose a two-year delay to a Biden-era rule restricting greenhouse gas emissions by cars and light trucks.

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Zeldin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy have moved to drastically scale back limits on tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks. Rules imposed under Democratic President Joe Biden were intended to encourage U.S. automakers to build and sell more electric vehicles. The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

The Trump administration announced a proposal in December to weaken vehicle mileage rules for the auto industry, loosening regulatory pressure on automakers to control pollution from gasoline-powered cars and trucks. The EPA said its two-year delay to a Biden-era rule on greenhouse gas emissions by cars and light trucks will give the agency time to develop a plan that better reflects the reality of slower EV sales, while promoting consumer choice and lowering prices.

The mileage plan would significantly reduce requirements that set rules on how far new vehicles need to travel on a gallon of gasoline. READ MORE

Excerpt from USA Today: The EPA "would lack statutory authority to regulate emissions based on global climate change concerns" under the Clean Air Act, the EPA wrote in a proposal submitted in August 2025 to rescind the finding.

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"No longer will automakers be pressured to shift their fleets toward electric vehicles ‒ vehicles that are still sitting unsold on dealer lots all across American," Zeldin said.

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The action can’t be reconciled with EPA's requirements under the law or science, environmental groups that oppose the action have argued. Some organizations have threated to sue the Trump administration.

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Does the move undermine science?

Climate advocacy groups pointed to statistics and studies that have concluded rising greenhouse gas emissions are driving more weather extremes, fueling more intense rainfall and more severe droughts.

The decision will bury “decades of research” and strip the agency’s ability to protect the nation from dangerous pollution, according to Climate Power, an advocacy group focused in part on holding fossil fuel interests accountable for the role they play in environmental policy. READ MORE

Excerpt from Barron's: Companies and investors have been bracing for the Trump administration’s rescission since the EPA first proposed it last July, but the move could still have major implications for car makers.

Spurred by environmental regulations, many companies launched electric-vehicle product lines and collected EV tax credits over the past several years. Scrapping those greenhouse gas regulations would mean near-term losses for companies heavily invested in EVs.

In a January regulatory filing, General Motors estimated that $1.1 billion of its total $1.4 billion in acquired credits would be subject to impairment if the EPA removes greenhouse gas rules.

On the other hand, the move could mean a renewed focus on less energy-efficient but more profitable business lines. That is especially true for GM, Ford Motor, and Stellantis North America, which are major sellers of trucks and SUVs, said Morningstar analyst David Whiston.

“If you have less government regulation in selling less fuel-efficient, bigger vehicles, that means you have more freedom to market and sell those vehicles without having to also then run as large of a money-losing EV business,” Whiston told Barron’s.

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The impact may be more straightforward for pure-play EV companies. Tesla has long collected emissions credits from its EVs and then sold them on the secondary market, creating a high-margin business stream. Automotive regulatory credits—some of which are not greenhouse-gas credits—contributed about $2 billion to Tesla’s ... $94.8 billion in revenue in 2025.

Perhaps the bigger challenge for auto makers, whether they are selling EVs or gas-guzzlers, is that no environmental regulation ever seems to last very long in Washington.

“There’s potential for a lot of see-sawing in Washington on environmental policy in respect to the auto industry,” Whiston said. “It’s likely a Democrat will take over as president at some point, and it’s unlikely they would keep the current Trump environmental policies in place.” READ MORE

Excerpt from NBC News: Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also announced Thursday that the agency is removing all greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles.

"We are repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding and terminating all additional green emissions standards imposed unnecessarily on vehicle models and engines between 2012 and 2027 and beyond," Trump said.

The EPA will still regulate pollutants in tailpipe emissions that hamper air quality, such as carbon monoxide, lead and ozone.

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Following Trump's announcement Thursday, several other organizations announced their intention to sue, including the American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

“As organizations committed to protecting public health, we will challenge this unlawful repeal," they said in a statement.

The coming legal battles will almost assuredly take years to resolve, with the administration’s justifications for its repeal up against ample scientific evidence of climate change’s harms in court.

In its draft of the rule repealing the endangerment finding, the EPA argued that it had overstated the risks of heat waves, projected more global warming than had taken place and discounted benefits of increases in carbon emissions, like increased plant growth. Independent science organizations have dismissed many of those arguments and pushed back against a controversial Energy Department report that the EPA cited in its proposal.

“The climate is changing faster than ever before, driven by human activities, and the resulting impacts on people and the world we depend on are becoming ever more dire,” the American Geophysical Union said in a statement about the Energy Department report.

“The changing climate is directly causing or exacerbating global average temperature increases and heat waves, sea level rise and storm surge, and ocean acidification, and is causing extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and drought to occur with greater frequency, intensity, or both.”

The administration has said it is reconsidering other policies that hinge on the endangerment finding, including regulations on methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Wednesday on Fox Business that repealing the finding would boost the coal industry.

“CO₂ [carbon dioxide] was never a pollutant,” he said. “The whole endangerment thing opens up the opportunity for the revival of clean, beautiful American coal.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Carbon 180: Specifically, the determination that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare, first issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2009 and upheld repeatedly by the courts, has been formally withdrawn by the same agency that first issued it. This move is expected to face legal challenges given its long-standing judicial history and deeply researched scientific precedent.

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In practice, this meant emissions standards could be set, enforced, and defended in court. Climate action was treated as a systemic obligation – not a voluntary ambition or political preference. That legal backbone shaped everything from power sector rules to vehicle standards, and it created a coherent framework in which emissions reductions were expected, residual emissions were defined, and climate responsibility had a level of enforceable meaning.

The Endangerment Finding and subsequent litigation established that greenhouse gases fell under EPA’s mandate, and that the risk was severe enough to make it the federal government’s legal duty to mitigate. Without it, remaining authorities are narrower, more fragmented, and far easier to challenge.

Why this is crucial for carbon removal

Carbon removal is only credible when it operates inside a world where emissions are constrained. Its purpose is to address what remains after deep reductions – not to compensate for the absence of regulation.

The Endangerment Finding helped establish that logic. It situated carbon removal as a backstop within a regulated system, rather than a substitute for it.

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Compliance-driven demand becomes less certain and less durable.

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Repealing the Endangerment Finding does not eliminate carbon removal from the climate conversation. Instead, it pushes it into a more fragmented and unstable policy landscape.

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After all, climate change did not become less dangerous today. But the legal framework that treated it as a public risk did. READ MORE