President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced on Thursday that they were nuking the “endangerment finding” and delivering the “largest deregulatory action in American history.”
The policy had given the EPA tremendous unchecked power to highly regulate energy production and other sectors in a bid to stop the planet from warming. Trump views it as an economic disaster, and he’s getting rid of it:
First issued in 2009, the endangerment finding determined that six greenhouse gases could be categorized as dangerous to human health under the Clean Air Act. It has underpinned the EPA’s authority to limit planet-warming pollution from the oil and gas industry, power plants and vehicles since the Obama administration and is considered the federal government’s most powerful tool to tackle climate pollution and the country’s contribution to the global crisis.
“We are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding,” President Donald Trump said on Thursday, calling the policy “disastrous.”
🚨WATCH: EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin celebrates the end of the Obama-era "endangerment finding."
— Off The Press (@OffThePress1) February 12, 2026
"The Trump EPA has finalized the single largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States of America." pic.twitter.com/X3r7f83cVS
As our Ward Clark wrote Tuesday in a piece previewing this announcement:
Those [endangerment] regulations, of course, were like putting a sea anchor on the economy. It seems Democrats never saw a scheme for jacking up energy costs that they didn't like, and the Obama people were no exceptions. Now we're seeing some of the stupidity reversed.
[…]
Energy is at the heart of everything we do. Energy costs are reflected in the price of everything we buy, every product, every commodity, every service, everything.
READ MORE: Trump Now Targeting Obama’s Greenhouse Gas Threat Declaration for Sweeping Regulatory Rollback
Time for 'Trump Speed': Lee Zeldin Descends on LA to Jumpstart Failing Wildfire Rebuild Effort
It’s a sharp contrast to the regimes of Obama and Biden, who both seem determined to neuter our energy production, drive up costs for virtually everything, and backtrack on progress.
It’s not the only move that Trump has made recently to undo some of his predecessors' more onerous policies:
In addition, the Trump administration will finalize a repeal of rules that regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, since they stem from the finding. Under former President Joe Biden, the EPA sought to tighten those standards to prod the auto industry to make more fuel-efficient hybrids and electric vehicles — an effort the industry has since backtracked on.
In the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history, President Trump and I are now announcing the repeal of the 2009 Obama EPA Endangerment Finding, ALL vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards that followed, and ALL off-cycle credits that include the much-despised…
— Lee Zeldin (@epaleezeldin) February 12, 2026
In the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history, President Trump and I are now announcing the repeal of the 2009 Obama EPA Endangerment Finding, ALL vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards that followed, and ALL off-cycle credits that include the much-despised start-stop feature in vehicles. This action will save over $1.3 TRILLION in costs for Americans!
Zeldin also announced that they were putting an end to the ultra-annoying stop-start features in cars. If you’ve ever had one, you know it makes you want to pound the steering wheel.
Unlike his predecessors, Trump wants to unleash the full power of the American economy, and with this move, he’s on his way to doing it.
No word from Judge Boasberg yet on whether he'll try to stop it.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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