Administrator Zeldin Announces 31 Historic Actions to Power the Great American Comeback (see video below)
WASHINGTON – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency will undertake 31 historic actions in the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history, to advance President Trump’s Day One executive orders and Power the Great American Comeback. Combined, these announcements represent the most momentous day in the history of the EPA. While accomplishing EPA’s core mission of protecting the environment, the agency is committed to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower cost of living for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to states to make their own decisions.
“Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” said EPA Administrator Zeldin.
“Alongside President Trump, we are living up to our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, and work hand-in-hand with our state partners to advance our shared mission,” added EPA Administrator Zeldin.
These historic actions will roll back trillions in regulatory costs and hidden “taxes” on U.S. families. As a result of these announcements, the cost of living for American families will decrease. It will be more affordable to purchase a car, heat homes, and operate a business. It will be more affordable to bring manufacturing into local communities while individuals widely benefit from the tangible economic impacts.
These actions will create American jobs, including incredible progress to bring back American auto jobs. The Biden and Obama era regulations being reconsidered have suffocated nearly every single sector of the American economy.
Today, EPA Administrator Zeldin announced the following actions:
UNLEASHING AMERICAN ENERGY
- Reconsideration of regulations on power plants (Clean Power Plan 2.0)
- Reconsideration of regulations throttling the oil and gas industry (OOOO b/c)
- Reconsideration of Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that improperly targeted coal-fired power plants (MATS)
- Reconsideration of mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program that imposed significant costs on the American energy supply (GHG Reporting Program)
- Reconsideration of limitations, guidelines and standards (ELG) for the Steam Electric Power Generating Industry to ensure low-cost electricity while protecting water resources (Steam Electric ELG)
- Reconsideration of wastewater regulations for coal power plants to help unleash American energy (Oil and Gas ELG)
- Reconsideration of Biden-Harris Administration Risk Management Program rule that made America’s oil and natural gas refineries and chemical facilities less safe (Risk Management Program Rule)
LOWERING THE COST OF LIVING FOR AMERICAN FAMILIES
- Reconsideration of light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty vehicle regulations that provided the foundation for the Biden-Harris electric vehicle mandate (Car GHG Rules)
- Reconsideration of the 2009 Endangerment Finding and regulations and actions that rely on that Finding (Endangerment Finding)
- Reconsideration of technology transition rule that forces companies to use certain technologies that increased costs on food at grocery stores and semiconductor manufacturing (Technology Transition Rule)
- Reconsideration of Particulate Matter National Ambient Air Quality Standards that shut down opportunities for American manufacturing and small businesses (PM 2.5 NAAQS)
- Reconsideration of multiple National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for American energy and manufacturing sectors (NESHAPs)
- Restructuring the Regional Haze Program that threatened the supply of affordable energy for American families (Regional Haze)
- Overhauling Biden-Harris Administration’s “Social Cost of Carbon”
- Redirecting enforcement resources to EPA’s core mission to relieve the economy of unnecessary bureaucratic burdens that drive up costs for American consumers (Enforcement Discretion)
- Terminating Biden’s Environmental Justice and DEI arms of the agency (EJ/DEI)
ADVANCING COOPERATIVE FEDERALISM
- Ending so-called “Good Neighbor Plan” which the Biden-Harris Administration used to expand federal rules to more states and sectors beyond the program’s traditional focus and led to the rejection of nearly all State Implementation Plans
- Working with states and tribes to resolve massive backlog with State Implementation Plans and Tribal Implementation Plans that the Biden-Harris Administration refused to resolve (SIPs/TIPs)
- Reconsideration of exceptional events rulemaking to work with states to prioritize the allowance of prescribed fires within State and Tribal Implementation Plans (Exceptional Events)
- Reconstituting Science Advisory Board and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (SAB/CASAC)
- Prioritizing coal ash program to expedite state permit reviews and update coal ash regulations (CCR Rule)
- Utilizing enforcement discretion to further North Carolina’s recovery from Hurricane Helene
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I approve.
Second
Now, let’s vote.
I don’t. Not because I don’t like what’s on the list, but because of what’s missing.
I’m all for returning power to the states, except in the case of the California Air Resource Board (CARB). This powerful political group is allowed to set standards for a number of other states. The power that the EPA gave to CARB should be rescinded.
California should not have the ability to drive national transportation, and power tool industry standards. For interstate commerce reasons, manufacturers should only have to adhere to national pollution (and safety) standards.
I am for your proposal.
That said, I do not know if it was part of one of the others on the cutting board.
What was the mechanism used by EPA to grant authority to CARB?
In the Air Quality Act of 1967 (P.L. 90-148), later amended to the Clean Air Act (CAA; codified at 42 U.S.C. §§7401 et seq.), Congress preempted state governments from adopting their own air pollutant emissions standards for new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines. Notwithstanding, Congress decided to provide an exemption for the State of California. Under CAA Section 209, California can apply to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a waiver from the federal preemption, and EPA is to grant this waiver absent certain disqualifying conditions. As of 2024, California has used this authority to receive more than 100 federal preemption waivers for new and amended state-level vehicle emissions standards.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48168
I don’t believe that the EPA has ever revoked any of the waivers.
> “most consequential day of deregulation…”
No, these never should have been regulations.
Delete the “No, ” from the beginning of your second sentence.
He also announced the DOGE goal of cutting EPA spending by 65%.
And last night announced that he had successfully clawed back the $20 billion green grants parked at Citibank that the previous admin had referred to as gold bricks.
Many of these regulations/rules were tightened at the end of the Brandon administration. They were the bane of my existence.
Good show!
All of which can be rolled back by a new administration.
Shutter the EPA.
Good point. Congress needs to follow up.
The EPA has been “weaponized” for a lot longer than the DOJ and the IRA + other agencies.
We do need sane regulations but Congress gave the EPA the ability issue regulations that had the effect of law. It’s that last part, “the ability issue regulations that had the effect of law” that needs to be reigned in/cut off.
The language of “The Clean Water” and “The Clean Air Act” needs to be reexamined and rewritten.
The Executive Branch (and the Judicial Branch) have the Constitutional authority to enforce Laws (and determine if Laws are Constitutional) but NOT the authority to make regulations (or rulings) that have the effect of Law.
My understanding is that SCOTUS had already done this.
Only partially. The ruling was not all encompassing.
Part of this process includes the NGO-EPA partnership in the ‘sue-and-settle’ process (example: https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/report/regulation-through-sham-litigation-the-sue-and-settle-phenomenon) where single issue decisions are applied to the entire USA.
Burn it down and salt the earth it was built upon, assuming, of course, they obtain the requisite permits to do so.
I hear ya, BUT this gives us hope especially since Chevron Deference is no longer available to agencies in passing new regulations. Existing regulations were left in place by the Supreme Court but if Zeldin/Trump can reverse them it won’t be so easy for a Democrat controlled EPA to reapply them since many of these regulations clearly do not apply to the ‘original intent of Congress’ when creating the EPA.
It cannot be possibly «rolled back by a new administration». Just like it could not possibly be rolled in by this, ahem, “administration”. Simply because White House does not matter this much.
It was conclusively demonstrated years ago that the mid/top tiers of the oligarchic blob can ignore or even depose Trump with moderate amount of efforts and no repercussions whatsoever.
Also, consider the silly NASA “reform”, after his earlier attempt to completely rebuild NASA on a fresh command chain.
The only hypothesis so far as to why this time they did not stop him just as easily that fits observable facts is simple: the higher powers pulled their leashes. The halfwit bureaucrats were screwing up too much, so they decided “let Trump clean some of the mess they made”. Bu-ut not too much of the mess. It follows that if EPA suddenly turned to the opposite direction and barks on “here, deregulation good” tree, likewise the leash was pulled on, so it will maintain this position for as long as the bosses make clear their desire for this outcome. Otherwise it had no reason to not “#resist #OrangeManBad” indefinitely.
This ain’t Trump 2016. This is the new, battle ready Trump administration. It’s loaded for bear.
It will take many years to clean house. Trump and MAGA must win the midterms and we need another MAGA president elected in 2028. With Democrats running on trans kids and pro-government waste these are doable.
Every single phrase in this nonsense beyond the first (which is not accompanied by evidence from the observable reality to at least illustrate why it is not) is too generic and meaningless to even be wrong.
Let’s recall “The Most Secure Election in American History”. In 2020 the clowns did not want Trump elected and, um, “somehow” he was not. Clearly a lecherous zombie proved more popular. LOL.
All the Good and Great press and internet toilet walls filtered Trump out. The auditors were turned away, courts exercised “too early to complain”/“too late to complain” Cach-22, etc etc. Facehug banned mentions of a certain law of statistics. All those thimble-rigged reports on audits, etc, etc.
So, was anyone thrown into prison for any of this? Obviously, no. Nor was there even personnel lustration. Nothing of the sort. Thus: deterrence by any conceivable official force is not a part of it.
So here’s a simple question: what exactly relevant to this have changed in this time so that all this show was not repeated 4 years later with the only difference being the name of the new “victorious” nobody?
If the answer is “no evidence that anything changed”, then the inevitable conclusion is that those same forces were in charge then and now, but they made a U-turn in these 4 years and agreed to a new figurehead.
Is there any other coherent hypothesis?
We don’t know for sure and I am worried as you are. But Musk now owns X and he and Zuckerberg have opened their platforms up to increase free speech and prevent government interference so it will be easier to get the truth out than it was in the last few years. If Trump got elected and now there is more free speech, that may help ……..
I’m not at all worried. And would not be exactly “worried” having more skin in this particular game. Because to me it’s clear like spring water what goes on.
A great indicator is that “NASA reform” nonsense. Trump’s original solution was Space Force, i.e. rebuilding NASA from scratch on a fresh command chain (which of course is an entirely correct approach at the advanced stages of rot). So how can this even be on the table?
I see only one sensible explanation: Trump is allowed and even encouraged to clean up the mess made all over the place… at least to the extent that neither nuclear war nor total infrastructure collapse are likely to happen. But he is stuck cleaning Augean Stables with a boot brush, because the “backseat drivers” won’t let him to use actually effective means. He is simply not allowed to act as a proper CEO.
The rough predictions on how and where this can go are also not very enigmatic, of course. In 4 years the stables will stink just the same, but it will be possible to walk from the door to grain throughs… if one steps carefully.
Trump has successfully crushed USAID which was the source of much of the corruption and kickbacks via NGO’s. He is doing the same at the Department of Education, which probably hasn’t long to live. This suggests his clean-up is serious and irreversible.
As to serious, Trump was clearly aiming to rebuild NASA the first time around and even already had some of the work done. Now he did not even try. The “reform” beyond superficial level can only become a mire, and he obviously knew this.
So why do you think he has actual power to execute a clean-up to the level he considers necessary, much less desirable?
In many other areas, it‘s far worse: could Trump find cadres suitable for an overhaul, even if he had sufficient power? Consider that he put a neocon in charge of his State Department transition team. But didn’t his rhetoric endorse isolationist, protectionist policies? That’s, um, not what the neocons tend to push, yes? So why not a foreign-policy professional able and willing to run isolationist policy? See the right answer, but it’s fairly obvious.
Irreversible?! Think about it for a minute. Even if he managed to eradicate the Department of Education completely, why could it not reappear soon later, with all personnel back and issued a reprint of “Brave Innocent McCarthyism Survivor” medals? Or spawned from another department by usual bureaucratic fission? To make it irreversible, much more than a rubber-stamp department or three would need to be buried (and then, perhaps some stakes plunged into the soil to be sure).
An actual irreversible overhaul would have to be as thorough as New Deal revolution was, and in the opposite direction. Can you even imagine such a change?
This is great news. Lee Zeldin is a keeper. This looks like a “shock and awe” effort on many fronts to put the will of the people into effect promptly.
We’ll see what happens.
But for the Left’s demagoguery of SCOTUS’ Dobbs decision, he would have been the current governor of NY.
I’m actually quite glad he didn’t win the governorship of NY. He is doing far more damage to the Deep State at the EPA than he could as governor.
Lets see if it actually ever happens. The Democrats haven’t been as upset since their slaves were taken away.
And they haven’t figured out what they believe in and so their Lawyers and money are being thrown out randomly. One way to cripple the DemocRats is to overload them.
Cloward-Piven strategy comes back to bite them in the *ss.
😎
I listened to Slotkin delivering the Dem’s rebuttal to Trump’s join session address live.
As she said what the Dem’s wanted to do, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Then why didn’t you vote for Trump?”. He’s in the process of doing those things.
Excellent!
I worry that another Democrat President will reverse these reforms in the future, but we can dance in the streets until then. What we need is for Congress to act and severely restrict the rule-making authority of the EPA and clarify with legislation that they cannot make any changes to existing air and water emissions standards, or regulate any emissions not expressly listed in existing legislation without Congressional approval. We need to permanently end the Leftist reign of terror through the EPA.
And several other agencies.
You should have gotten more pluses. Yes, this site focuses on Climate, but not a single agency is clean.
As I noted above the overturning of Chevron Deference by the SC has already gone a long way in ‘severely restricting the rule-making authority’ of the EPA (and all other agencies). For clearly ‘pragmatic’ reasons the SC ruling did not apply to existing regulations but every regulation that is overturned now will have a much harder time being put back in place if they are not clearly aligned with the ‘intent of Congress’ when creating an agency.
Perhaps I’m being naive or overly hopeful but as long as the SC remains in the hands of constitutionalists Trump’s team has a real chance of remaking the regulatory landscape by slashing everything they can reasonably identify as not having a direct link to the legislation that created an agency. If I recall correctly that was Trump’s directive to his agencies a couple of weeks back so clearly they understand the importance of the overturning of the Chevron Deference ruling to the ability for a future administration to create regulations.
“What we need is for Congress to act and severely restrict …”
Yes. Including just what and when an “Executive Order” can be issued and for how long.
This Layman’s impression was that they were strictly to enforce the Laws Congress had passed or to respond to an genuine emergency before Congress had time to convene. (The nuclear “football” would be an example of the later.)
Obama abused the hell of EOs. In my humble opinion, Trump is just using EOs to undo the damage.
Maybe an 7 or 8 year limit on EOs? I’m just throwing that out.
PS Obama is famous for saying, “If Congress won’t act, then I will.”)
You’re off tsrget on Executive Orders. EOs are policy. They’re interpretation of how laws will be implemented. EOs are not new laws and must (legally) follow the laws and Constitution.
EOs are simply policy for an administration. They last until a new EO replaces them. To limit EOs, Congress must step up and stop deferring to the Executive branch.
The Emancipation Proclamation was an EO. Without any action from Congress, it declared the date that all slaves were to be freed. The South may not have accepted that EO, but two years later they were forced to do so.
That sounds a bit more than policy.
That is a bit of a spin on the EP, but the similarities are close enough.
Not quite. The EP only applied to areas in rebellion against the United States. Four slave states did not rebel (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri) and the EP did not apply. It only had effect in the areas of the Conderacy under Federal occupation.
From my comment:
Was the Emancipation Proclamation legal? Certainly not. The Constitution does not grant the Executive this power.
You can find many examples. Biden repeatedly issued illegal EOs on student loans. Trump’s delaying the sale of TikTok is another.
In the Emancipation Proclamation, the Commander-in-Chief decided how the Army would deal with certain captured enemy property.
Congress needs to act to reinforce Trump’s EOs.
The 2026 midterms are crucial. As things stand it will be almost impossible to provide permanent legislative fixes such as to the EPA. Majorities are TOO slim in both House and Senate.
Heavily restricting the use of mail in or other absentee ballots is crucial. As well as cleaning up voter rolls. I am still probably registered in California, even though I have not been there since 2005.
Only 2005? Some have been on the rolls since the late 18th century. You can’t imagine how important it is to keep voters like that – not many people have 2 1/2 centuries of knowledge to base their votes on. NB. Votes plural.
Why is it the dead always vote Democrat?
Gender identity?
“I am still probably registered in California, even though I have not been there since 2005”
And still voting for Newsome !! 😉
It’s early, but I just saw a poll on Fox News showing the Democrats looking very weak for 2026.
Something like 27 percent of those polled favored the Democrat position, whereas 57 percent opposed it.
And I think two Democrat U.S. Senators have said they will not run in 2026, so that may give an advantage to Republicans.
Republicans need about 63 U.S. Senate seats and about 250 House seats. Then we could really get something done and the Democrats could not stop it. Here’s hoping!
Democrats have decided to stand on trans kids and bloated government. Those don’t make a winning platform.
Indeed. The idea that their demented policies could be the reason they lost has clearly not occurred to them. Most of them still sincerely believe Kamala lost in 2024 was because of racism and misogyny.
I wonder how those numbers will shift when the Dems force a government shutdown.
In contrast to what the USA is doing under Trump, both the major political parties in Australia are fully committed to NetZero.
Today’s news in Australia:
Australian energy consumers weary after years of soaring power prices are set to be slugged again, with benchmark tariffs tipped to rise by between five and 10 per cent within months.
In a draft decision that will land on the cusp of a federal election, the Australian Energy Regulator is today expected to recommend an increase to the so-called default market offer (DMO) in multiple states.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/markets/power-bills-to-rise-yet-again-as-regulator-tipped-to-hike-price-caps-by-five-to-10-per-cent/ar-AA1AMPLz
“Renewable” Energy is cheap but also useless. It does not reduce the requirement for dispatchable capacity and all”renewable” energy garners the RET Theft from consumers not able to make their own.
Australia’s government research organisation, CSIRO, are too dim to realise that more “renewable” energy connected to the grid causes prices to go up. They are well snared in the Bloomberg LCOE trap and yet to realise that they are dealing with a power supply SYSTEM that is demand driven not collective sources of electricity generators..
Like the ABC, the CSIRO and the BoM are run as staff collectives, all governed by the Fabian Society’s socialist ideology whose foremost aim is “The Long March Through The Institutions”.
And the destruction of western civilizations and the reduction of humanity to under 1B.
The excellent documentary “The True Cost of Net Zero” needs to be required viewing for all Australians before the next election.[and the rest of world plagued by “climate crisis” policies].
Produced by Sky News, it focuses mostly on Aussie-land but about 1/4 of it is about the USA’s similar situation. WUWT featured this video IIRC. I played it for a group of about 18 seniors at our
local community college then had a hour of Q&A afterwards. It opened quite a few eyes.
https://youtu.be/YbxpieEQ7bc
Perhaps we may have reached the beginning of the end of insanity.
Stay tuned to this station!
A great list well thought out. The systematic nature of the Trump EO’s is truly impressive.
On a quibble note I think the biggest dereg day was in 1776.
Humor – a difficult concept.
— Lt. Saavik
Wow! To bad that the evil enemies called federal judges will try to stop them.
Unfortunately, it seems to matter if they were Clinton, Obama or Biden appointees.
They weren’t known to appoint those who had ever read read let alone studied the The Constitution and The Bill of Rights. (Unless it was to find ways around them.)
I’m getting an idea of how the Trump administration looks at Climate Change Alarmists.
The other day, the Secretary of Energy referred to Human-caused Climate Change as a “climate change religion”, and now EPA administrator says the same thing.
So, I infer that the Trump administration does not take the Human-caused Climate Change narrative as a serious matter.
And that’s good because it is not a serious matter. So the Trump administration is on the right track in characterizing this climate change insanity. It is a religion.
From “CAGW” to “Climate Change’, it’s always been political science. Just a lever to wealth and power for some that crave both.
I would be stronger than that and claim that it’s a cult, as most religions are generally tolerant of other viewpoints.
I would agree with you.
Interesting Observation.
Unfortunately I see nothing yet from this administration that’s going to save my beautiful rural township from being crushed by a huge Solar/Battery plant. Destroying prime farmland.
Nobody said it was going to be easy. Buckle down and fight it. Trump isn’t superman; you have to blaze the trail and send up smoke signals. We’re only 6 weeks into this. Hold the fort until the cavalry arrives.
What a great relief to hear some straight talk from D.C. after years of hoping for nothing better than the odd Rep. Luke Warmer!
“driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion”
Wow! Like killing Dracula! 🙂
Must be a lot climatistas jumping off bridges.
Beware of climate zombies.
Where is CAFE standards or is that another department?
But…. will all this actually kill Net Zero laws in some states?
It’s about time that all of this is done !
If there’s one thing the US Constitution needs amended to fix, it’s the Commerce Clause. Congress has long used that as an end run around the 10th Amendment. That giant loophole needs to be slammed firmly shut and welded closed.
That giant loophole needs to be slammed firmly shut and welded closed.
I think that may require a SCOTUS ruling – I may be wrong but I believe that door was opened by a SCOTUS ruling in the first place.
Difficult.
The US is a Constitutional Federal Republic.
Originally founding in the Articles of Confederation as a union of sovereign States.
The founding fathers were cautious enough to allow modification of the Constitution as the country grew and society evolved.
Interstate commerce would require treaties between States. There are some who can argue that only Congress can ratify treaties with the counter point that it only applies for foreign countries. The counter-counter point is that States are sovereign except as defined in the Constitution.
As a republic, the cooperation between States is to be maintained by the Federal government. Then there is the precedent in the Constitution for Post roads and interstate commerce.
It is historical fact that Congress has abused the Commerce Clause more than a few times. Dictating to a State how it’s industry must perform because of the potential that goods would cross State lines is one example.
So, while updating it seems a worthwhile prospect, I disagree that Congress uses it to end run the 10th Amendment. Not an end run, perhaps a red dog/blitz? Perhaps it is the 10th Amendment that needs a refresh?
FYI, State’s Rights was one of the principle causes leading to the Great War of Rebellion (or Succession) 1860-1865.
This is an honest question: Can EPA reverse the endangerment ruling without going through the courts? I thought the ruling was supported by the Supreme court and only SC can reverse it, same like RvW.
Whenever you use the words ‘Biden-Harris Administration’, you raise Harris who was a total zero up until her attempted usurpation of her braindead predecessor; and even then contributed nothing to the running of the government.
“Overhauling Biden-Harris Administration’s “Social Cost of Carbon” “
Try scrapping.
Fantastic. But, remember that the Luddites are out there planning to scuttle all this good work. They hate humanity and have only ill will toward their fellowman.
The EPA has for decades done rulemaking under the precautionary principal premise. Any manufacturing or manufactured product that has anything to do with emissions is guilty of violating EPA regulations until proven otherwise. Proving a negative is “challenging.”