Trump’s EPA clearly shows it doesn’t understand the assignment
If there can be such a thing as bureaucratic “shock and awe,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin tried to unleash it Wednesday.
He unveiled the Trump administration’s widely anticipated assault on regulation on all fronts at once, announcing 31 separate actions to roll back restrictions on air and water pollution, hand over more authority to states and relinquish EPA’s mandate to act on climate change under the Clean Air Act.
“These announcements represent the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in the history of the United States,” an EPA representative wrote in one of a slew of press releases. Zeldin said the moves would lower the cost of living, create jobs and revitalize the economy. In a video posted on the social media site X, Zeldin exulted over the plan to rescind the EPA’s 16-year-old determination that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health and welfare, known as the endangerment finding.
