Trump’s new-look EPA: The Environmental Pollution Agency

Most people would agree that characterising the Trump Presidency as consequential, eventful, or chaotic would be an understatement. Not a day passes without a new announcement, an unexpected policy or a reversal of the prior day’s decisions – frequently with little warning, explanation or reason.

What transpired in mid-February 2026, however, is likely to be among the most consequential shifts in the annals of the American energy and environmental regulation or – in this case – deregulation.

A day after a White House ceremony to promote “clean, beautiful coal” attended by the Christ Wright, the US Energy Secretary, the president was joined by Lee Zeldin, his equally zealous administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to announce the rescission of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding.

It represents a significant escalation in the administration’s relentless fight against green energy and its persistent denial of climate change.

The decision was presented as just one more effort to make energy more affordable for everyday Americans by repealing virtually all regulations on harmful greenhouse gas emissions from cars, trucks, power plants and polluting industries.

The administration’s critics, there are quite a few of them, said it is one of the most irresponsible – and illegal – decisions made by this administration. Most likely it won’t be the last.

Unless the move is challenged and reversed, it will essentially be the end of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whose original mission was to protect human health and welfare by regulating harmful pollutants – including greenhouse gases – which were found to be harmful by the US Supreme Court in earlier and, shall we say, more normal times.

It is highly unusual for a government agency to essentially put itself out of business, but not anymore. As one cynical subscriber suggested, the EPA
can now be renamed as the environmental pollution agency, keeping its acronym but no longer its original mission.

On the floor of the US Senate Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, criticised the move as a “corrupt giveaway to Big Oil” and rhetorically asked, “Who will pay the price for Donald Trump’s corruption?”

His answer, “Quite literally every single community in this country,” adding, “The blast radius of this reckless decision will span from San Diego to Portland, Maine, and from Seattle to Miami” – from sea to the shining sea.

On 12 Feb 2026 the editorial board of The New York Times opined that the Trump administration’s lawlessness undermines social order by making citizens distrust their government. ‘

Another op-ed on the same date opined that every institution that claims to protect us seems to be failing. The polling organisation Gallup announced that after nearly 90 years it would stop keeping track of US presidential approval rating. No explanation was given.

This article was originally published in EEnergy Informer. Republished here with permission