President Donald Trump has turned the Environmental Protection Agency into the spear tip of a sweeping effort to dismantle climate and pollution safeguards. The result is a coordinated push that threatens to contaminate the air people breathe, the water they drink and the global effort to contain heating. I see a pattern that runs from power plants to tailpipes to drinking water, with each rollback compounding the next.
Instead of tightening protections as science grows more urgent, the administration is methodically loosening them, often in ways its own documents acknowledge will cost lives and accelerate greenhouse gas emissions. The stakes are not abstract: they show up as asthma attacks, cancer risks, flooded neighborhoods and higher energy and fuel bills over time.
The architecture of Trump’s deregulation machine
The Trump EPA has not just tweaked a few rules, it has built an aggressive deregulatory program that treats environmental protections as obstacles to be cleared. Early in his second term, The Trump Administration listed sweeping changes under the label of Environmental Protections, with the Date of a major Action on February 4, 2025 that set the tone for what followed. Soon after, the EPA itself touted the launch of the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history,” a package that included Reconsideration of a technology transition rule and a move to rewrite nearly all State Implementation Plans that underpin clean air enforcement.
That deregulatory push has been paired with a broader political project to reverse climate progress at home and abroad. One assessment finds that Trump has already rolled back dozens of environmental rules, including national air quality standards for particulate matter and limits on climate pollution, as part of a wider effort that, in the words of one analysis, shows how Trump reversed climate progress. A separate tracker catalogs how the EPA delays and repeals have become a central tool in that strategy, with an online Trumptracker detailing dozens of individual moves.
Air pollution rollbacks that hit lungs first
Nowhere is the human cost clearer than in the air. In April 2025, In April the Trump administration exempted 68 coal‑fired power plants from pollution limits in the strengthened MATS rule, a decision advocates say effectively halted clean air laws for most of the country. Those MATS standards were designed to curb mercury and other toxic emissions that contribute to neurological damage in children and heart attacks in adults, yet the rollback carves out some of the dirtiest plants from those protections. At the same time, The EPA also proposed weakening a regulation that requires power plants to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants, a move that, according to one analysis, would increase the risk of heart attacks and other health problems in adults as power plants burn more coal and release more toxins.
The administration is also targeting the way the EPA counts the benefits of clean air. A Jan policy shift would stop the agency from fully considering the lives saved by limiting air pollution, a change that internal documents suggest could make it easier to repeal limits on pollutants from coal‑burning power plants, oil refineries and steel mills while still claiming that repeals pass a cost‑benefit test. That change, described in detail in a Jan report, is reinforced by a companion proposal that, as another Jan analysis notes, could make it easier to repeal limits while resulting in dirtier air, by sidelining co‑benefits like reduced particulate matter that come from climate rules. On the airwaves, the Brian Lar Show on WNYC walked listeners through how the Environmental Prote changes would reshape regulation of deadly air pollutants, underscoring how technical rule tweaks translate into real‑world health risks.
Smog, “Good Neighbor” protections and downwind sacrifice zones
One of the most striking examples of this shift is the attack on interstate smog rules. The EPA has unveiled a proposal to revoke parts of the Good Neighbor Plan, a move that its own critics summarize with the phrase Move Would Leave in Downwind States at Risk from Smog‑Forming Pollution. The detailed version of that warning notes that the proposal would leave communities in those Downwind States at greater Risk of breathing Smog and Forming Pollution that pushes ozone levels above health standards, especially in Washington and other population centers that sit downwind of coal and gas plants. A separate summary of the same plan stresses that the Move Would Leave living with unhealthy levels of smog that drift across state lines.
The legal and political backdrop is just as telling. The Supreme Court had already halted the Biden Good Neighbor plan while challenges played out, but now The Supreme Court’s pause has been followed by a new effort in which the Trump administration is taking steps to scrap the interstate smog protections altogether, as detailed in a Jan account of how Jan developments unfolded. Environmental groups warn that this would effectively create sacrifice zones downwind of major industrial states, locking in higher asthma rates and hospital visits for people who never consented to host the pollution.
Water contamination and the quiet crisis in drinking supplies
While air rules draw headlines, the administration’s approach to water is just as consequential. A detailed review of the EPA under Lee Zeldin describes “A Year of Betrayal” in which PFAS contamination of drinking water is widespread, with preliminary testing showing that more than 73 m people use water above health‑based limits, leaving families, communities and local governments to shoulder the cost. Instead of racing to tighten standards, the agency has been slow‑walking new rules and, in some cases, weakening enforcement tools that could force polluters to pay for cleanup. A broader analysis of how EPA rollbacks will cost us in dollars and lives notes that when climate and pollution safeguards are dismantled, communities face higher medical bills and infrastructure costs, a point underscored in a Jul assessment that stresses how, When paired with climate adaptation, strong rules actually save money.
These choices are part of a larger pattern in which Zeldin and Trump have sought to undercut the scientific basis for regulation. Perhaps the biggest move Zeldin made in attacking climate action was to rescind the EPA’s 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health, a step one account describes with the phrase Perhaps the biggest move, and which directly names Zeldin and the EPA. That same pattern shows up in the administration’s own climate and clean energy rollback tracker, where entries describe how the EPA delayed until January 2027 a requirement for oil and gas operators to reduce methane pollution, allowing extra years of leaks into the atmosphere that also worsen local air quality around drilling sites.
Power plants, tailpipes and the climate math of delay
On climate, the Trump EPA is not just slowing progress, it is actively trying to erase the legal foundation for regulating greenhouse gases. Over the summer, The EPA argued there is no basis for regulating climate pollution, even as Nations were told by a top U.N. court that they must act on climate change or risk being held responsible for damage, a contradiction laid out in a Jul broadcast. A companion segment explains how The EPA also plans to eliminate rules to reduce climate pollution from power plants and other sources, even as climate‑driven storms and sea level rise are likely to cause damage inland, a warning repeated in a follow‑up Nations segment. Inside the agency, a Regulatory Impact Analysis, or RIA, prepared by the Trump EPA itself finds that repealing Carbon Pollution Standards for power plants would result in thousands of additional premature deaths and billions in lost climate benefits, a conclusion spelled out in an Trump EPA analysis and reiterated in a second summary of the same RIA that notes how the repeal would forfeit large amounts of prevented climate‑related damages, as detailed in a follow‑on RIA excerpt.
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