by Allison Prang, Iowa Capital Dispatch
July 26, 2025
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has submitted a proposal to scrap a years-old finding that greenhouse gas emissions threaten the environment and public health, a move that former agency officials say would gut the EPA’s authority to reduce emissions and is sure to end up in the courts.
The EPA sent a draft proposal to the White House late last month calling for scrapping what’s referred to as the endangerment finding on top of vehicle emissions standards for certain cars and trucks. The White House Office of Management and Budget could finish reviewing the draft on Monday and some expect an announcement on the issue the last week of July, Joe Goffman, a former assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, said in an interview.
Former EPA officials say such a move would gut the agency’s own power to curb greenhouse gas emissions, which have been widely found to cause global warming.
“It’ll be the most decisive step taken to make the agency totally irrelevant, which then will become an excuse to just get rid of it,” Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA administrator from 2001 to 2003 under President George W. Bush, said in a phone interview.
Whitman said she thinks “the long-term goal of all of this is to ensure that the agency can’t do regulations.”
‘Suffocating its own authority’
The EPA finalized what it is known as the endangerment finding in late 2009. It said that greenhouse gases are a threat to both the environment and public health and that emissions from vehicles pollute the air with greenhouse gases. The finding is what obligates the EPA to address greenhouse gas emissions, Goffman said.
“Essentially what the EPA is doing is suffocating its own authority under the Clean Air Act…to establish programs and rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Goffman, who worked at the EPA during the administrations of Democratic Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
“They’re making it impossible to take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” in a deliberate fashion, he said.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced back in March that the agency was going to reconsider the finding.
Its proposal — which was submitted to the executive branch’s Office of Management and Budget on June 30 — will be shared for public comment following interagency review and after Zeldin has signed it, an EPA spokesperson said Thursday in an email.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Court fight ahead
The Trump administration’s moves to scrap the finding and vehicle emissions standards are its latest plays to dial back U.S. climate policy and efforts to fight climate change.
President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans scaled back support for renewable energy projects and other climate policies in the budget reconciliation bill signed into law July 4.
Trump also signed executive orders during his first days back in office to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement again and to aid fossil fuel production.
The EPA said the endangerment finding went beyond the agency’s statutory authority under the Clean Air Act, according to a summary of part of the proposal that was sent to the White House.
The Clean Air Act “does not authorize the EPA to prescribe emission standards to address global climate change concerns,” an executive summary of the proposal sent to the White House states, according to an excerpt obtained by States Newsroom.
Because of that, the agency is proposing rescinding “the Administrator’s findings that GHG emissions from new motor vehicles and engines contribute to air pollution which may endanger public health or welfare,” it said.
The agency in its proposal also raises a key 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Massachusetts v. EPA that determined the EPA is allowed to regulate greenhouse gases as part of the Clean Air Act because they pollute the air.
The EPA argued that the decision doesn’t support how the agency has carried out the Clean Air Act. On top of that, the agency says that the “EPA unreasonably analyzed the scientific record” and that “developments cast significant doubt on the reliability of the findings.”
Similar to numerous other executive actions taken by the Trump administration, Whitman and Goffman said they expect this latest move will end up in the courts.
“This is the beginning of a long, long saga,” Goffman said.
Related: From Iowa Capital Dispatch
EPA proposed to remove certain pollution standards on fossil fuel-fired plants, claiming greenhouse gas emissions from the plants “do not contribute significantly” to dangerous air pollution.
The Sierra club estimated this repeal would allow Iowa utilities to emit 26 million tons of carbon annually.
Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com.
