Three former Environmental Protection Agency leaders said Friday that rollbacks proposed by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin endanger the lives of millions of Americans and abandon the agency's dual mission to protect the environment and human health.
Zeldin said Wednesday he plans to roll back 31 key environmental rules on everything from air to water and alleged human-caused climate change. Gina McCarthy, who led the EPA in Barack Obama's second term, called Zeldin's announcement "the most disastrous day in EPA history.''
The warning by McCarthy, who served under Obama and Joe Biden, was echoed by two former EPA heads who served under Republican presidents.
Zeldin's comprehensive plan to undo decades-old regulations was nothing short of a "catastrophe" and "represents the abandonment of a long history" of EPA actions to protect the environment, said William K. Reilly, who led the agency under President George H.W. Bush and played a key role in amending the Clean Air Act in 1990.
"What this administration is doing is endangering all of our lives — ours, our children, our grandchildren," added Christine Todd Whitman, who led the EPA under President George W. Bush. "We all deserve to have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. If there’s an endangerment finding to be found anywhere, it should be found on this administration because what they’re doing is so contrary to what the Environmental Protection Agency is about.''
Whitman was referring to one of the major actions Zeldin announced: to reconsider a scientific finding that planet-warming greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. The agency’s 2009 finding has been the legal underpinning for most U.S. action against alleged human-caused climate change, including regulations for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources.
Environmentalists and climate scientists called the endangerment finding a bedrock of U.S. law and said any attempt to undo it will have little chance of success.
Whitman and the other former agency heads said they were stunned that the Trump administration would even try to undo the finding and a host of other longtime agency rules. If approved, the rule changes could cause "severe harms" to the environment, public health and the economy, they said.
"This EPA administrator now seems to be doing the bidding of the fossil fuel industry more than complying with the mission of the EPA,'' said McCarthy, who was a top climate adviser in the Biden administration.
McCarthy and the other two former leaders emphasized that environmental protection and economic prosperity are not mutually exclusive, saying strong regulations have enabled a cleaner environment and a growing economy since the agency's founding 55 years ago.
EPA spokeswoman Molly Vaseliou said that Trump "advanced conservation and environmental stewardship while promoting economic growth for families across the country" in his first term "and will continue to do so this term."
Trump, who has human-caused called climate change a hoax, rolled back more than 100 environmental laws in his first term. He campaigned on a promise to "drill, baby, drill" and vowed to ease regulations on fossil fuel companies. In his current term, he has frozen funds for climate programs and other environmental spending, fired scientists working for the National Weather Service and cut federal support for renewable energy.
Zeldin, in announcing the rule changes, said, Trump officials "are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age.''
Among the changes are plans to rewrite a rule restricting air pollution from fossil-fuel fired power plants and a separate measure restricting emissions from cars and trucks.
The EPA also will take aim at rules restricting industrial pollution of mercury and other air toxins, soot pollution and a "good neighbor" rule intended to restrict smokestack emissions that burden downwind areas with smog. Zeldin also targeted a clean water law that provides federal protections for rivers, streams and wetlands.
If approved after a lengthy process that includes public comment, the set of actions will eliminate trillions of dollars in regulatory costs and "hidden taxes," Zeldin said, lowering the cost of living for American families and reducing prices for essentials such as buying a car, heating your home and operating a business.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.