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pollution
'This Executive Order is Illegal': Trump Attacks Half-Century of Environmental Protections in One Fell Swoop
"This chaotic administration is obviously desperate to smash through every environmental guardrail that protects people or preserves wildlife, but steps like this will be laughed out of court," said one advocate.
Apr 11, 2025
Numerous environmental protection groups were preparing to file lawsuits Friday after President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to repeal what he called "unlawful regulations" aimed at protecting the public from pollution, oil spills, and other harms—sharply curtailing the process through which rules are changed as he ordered agencies to "sunset" major regulations.
The order was issued a week-and-a-half before the deadline set by another presidential action in February, when Trump required agencies to identify "unconstitutional" and "unlawful" regulations for elimination or modification within 60 days.
Those restrictions, under Wednesday evening's order, can be repealed without being subject to a typical notice-and-comment period.
Trump named the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement among several agencies affected by the order, and listed more than two dozen laws containing regulations that must incorporate a sunset provision for no later than September 30, 2025.
The laws include the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987, and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.
Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, suggested the order was Trump's latest push to benefit corporate polluters.
The Trump corporate regime orders agencies to ‘sunset’ environmental protections, as part of an effort to make it easier for industry to pollute. thehill.com/policy/energ...
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— Hans Kristensen (@nukestrat.bsky.social) April 11, 2025 at 7:14 AM
Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said it was "beyond delusional" for Trump to attempt to repeal "every environmental safeguard enacted over the past 50 years with an executive order."
"Trump's farcical directive aims to kill measures that protect endangered whales, prevent oil spills, and reduce the risk of a nuclear accident," said Hartl. "This chaotic administration is obviously desperate to smash through every environmental guardrail that protects people or preserves wildlife, but steps like this will be laughed out of court."
In a memo, the White House wrote that "in effectuating repeals of facially unlawful regulations, agency heads shall finalize rules without notice and comment, where doing so is consistent with the 'good cause' exception in the Administrative Procedure Act."
"That exception allows agencies to dispense with notice-and-comment rulemaking when that process would be 'impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest,'" said the White House.
As climate advocates scoffed at the suggestion that regulating nuclear power and pollution-causing energy infrastructure is "contrary to the public interest," legal experts questioned the legality of Trump's order.
"If this action were upheld, it would be a significant change to the way regulation is typically done, which is through notice and comment," Roger Nober, director of George Washington University's Regulatory Studies Center, toldGovernment Executive. "If the agencies determine that a rule is contrary to the Supreme Court's current jurisprudence, then [this order says they] have good cause to remove it and [they] can get around notice and comment. That's certainly an untested and untried way of implementing the Administrative Procedure Act."
Georgetown University law professor William Buzbee toldThe Hill that the Supreme Court "has repeatedly reaffirmed that agencies seeking to change a policy set forth in a regulation have to go through a new notice-and-comment proceeding for each regulation, offer 'good reasons' for the change, and address changing facts and reliance interests developed in light of the earlier regulation."
"Adding a sunset provision without going through a full notice-and-comment proceedings for each regulation to be newly subject to a sunset provision seems intended to skirt the vetting and public accountability required by consistency doctrine," he said. "Like many other attempted regulatory shortcuts of the first and second Trump administration, this [executive order] seems likely to prompt legally vulnerable agency actions."
Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert suggested that the executive order is the latest example of Trump's push to govern the U.S. as "a king."
"He cannot simply roll back regulations that protect the public without going through the legally required process," Gilbert told Government Executive. "We will challenge this blatantly unlawful deregulatory effort at every step to ensure it doesn't hurt workers, consumers, and families."
Michael Wall, chief litigation officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the order "a blatant attempt to blow away hundreds of protections for the public and nature, giving polluters permission to ignore whatever is coming out of their smokestacks while developers disregard endangered species protections and Big Oil no longer heeds the reforms put in place after the Deepwater Horizon disaster."
"This executive order is illegal," he said. "Congress passed these laws, and the president's constitutional duty is to carry out those statutes; he has zero power to rewrite them."
"There's no magic wand the administration might wave to sweep away multiple rules on a White House whim," Wall added. "Any changes to the rules the president wants rescinded would have to be justified, rule by rule, with facts, evidence, and analysis specific to that rule. He cannot do this by fiat."
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More Environmental Justice Organizations Must Join the Call for a Militarism-Free Future
The climate crisis will never be solved while war and militarism are allowed to continue unchecked.
Apr 06, 2025
As the world braces for another Earth Day, the environmental justice movement is at a critical juncture. While much of the climate conversation continues to focus on Big Oil and other corporate polluters, there is a glaring, often overlooked, contributor to the climate crisis: the U.S. military.
In a bold statement of solidarity and urgency, several leading environmental justice organizations—including 350.org, Sunrise Movement, Climate Defenders, and National Priorities Project as well as frontline groups like NDN Collective, Anakbayan, and Diaspora Pa'Lante—have signed onto an open letter initiated by CODEPINK, urging the world to take the arduous baby step of recognizing the deadly intersection of war and environmental destruction. It's time for more environmental justice groups to join this critical call.
The open letter is clear: The U.S. military is the world's largest institutional polluter. With its staggering consumption of 4.6 billion gallons of fuel yearly, the Pentagon accounts for 77-80% of all U.S. government energy use. If the U.S. military were a country, it would rank as the world's 47th largest greenhouse gas emitter. Yet the environmental consequences of militarism are still not a significant part of mainstream climate conversations.
The military-industrial complex must be held accountable for its role in the climate crisis.
The letter's signatories are speaking out against the catastrophic impact of U.S. military operations on our planet. Beyond the immediate environmental degradation of war zones—such as the release of harmful chemicals like PFAS into soil and water—U.S. military presence around the globe has caused irreparable harm to ecosystems, agricultural lands, and local communities. There are 800 U.S. military bases around the world, many built on Indigenous lands or in violation of national sovereignty. These bases don't just exist in isolation; they are part of a larger, profoundly interconnected war economy that fuels environmental destruction.
Take the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine, for example. The devastation wreaked by the genocide in Gaza released more carbon emissions in its first two months than 20 countries combined. In Ukraine, the war has already emitted more than 119 million tons of carbon dioxide while destroying vast swaths of forest. The environmental toll of the conflict is horrific, yet the conversation about militarism's role in climate change is woefully absent in most climate spaces. It's time to change that.
Everyone should be alarmed that the use of nuclear weapons—an existential threat to the survival of humanity—is not out of the question. As we inch closer to potential nuclear war in places like Ukraine and the South West Asia and Northern Africa (SWANA) region, the implications for the climate are terrifying. Sustained warfare in both areas has the possibility of escalating to the use of nuclear weapons. A global "nuclear winter" can cause unprecedented disruption to the Earth's systems, food production, and biodiversity, directly tying geopolitical violence to the climate crisis.
Recent failures of global climate negotiations, such as COP, further underscore the urgency of this message. Countries in the Global South continue to bear the brunt of climate devastation. Not only is the Global North the main contributor to the pollution and environmental segregation that excavates climate disasters, but it also fails to provide the necessary funding for climate reparations. But beyond financial inequities, these summits fail to recognize one of the most significant threats to global environmental health: militarism. The climate crisis will never be solved while war and militarism are allowed to continue unchecked.
This is why the open letter signed by a coalition of environmental justice groups, frontline communities, and anti-war activists matters. It calls for a shift in how we view the climate crisis, acknowledging that the war economy is directly responsible for some of the most egregious environmental destruction we face today. The public must realize that the environmental degradation caused by war is not a separate issue from climate justice work but rather an integral part of it.
This movement needs more allies. The organizations already signed on are committed, but more environmental justice organizations must join this call. It is no longer enough only to target Big Oil or corporate interests. The military-industrial complex must be held accountable for its role in the climate crisis.
The letter's closing statement is a simple, common-sense statement. Yet it calls for a radical shift in the current landscape of political, economic, and non-governmental structures that our peace and environmental movements need to unite in: "We reject militarism, war, occupation, genocide, and degradation. Instead, we choose our continued global existence: peace, sovereignty, diplomacy, and liberation!"
This is not just a vision for a peaceful world but the only way forward for a planet that can sustain life. We all must start working for a future where climate justice isn't just about protecting ecosystems in isolation but understanding what causes the destruction of these ecosystems that we rely on and rely on us as well. We must start working for a future beyond war, empire, and militarism. The time to act is now.
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Saving the EPA's Research Arm From Trump Will Save Lives
The scientific community won’t stand by while this critical office is at risk of being dismantled.
Mar 27, 2025
When I was an undergraduate, I landed a paid internship that set me on a trajectory to a career in science policy—though of course I didn’t know it at the time. Like many college students, I had no idea what I wanted to do for work.
But my summer with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development in North Carolina opened my eyes. The smart, thoughtful federal scientists I worked with were using their scientific expertise to serve the public good. It was a revelation for a student who wanted to choose a path that positively impacted the world.
Already, the global reputation of the United States as a scientific powerhouse, where scientists from countries around the world come to learn and make discoveries freely, is in tatters.
Over the summer, I learned from a team of hard-working people about everything from pesticide research to health effects of air pollution to detecting water quality contamination. In my mentors, I saw their pride in being federal scientists, part of a robust scientific enterprise, and in advancing the public health and environmental mission of the EPA. I observed the tremendous impact they had improving environmental conditions for the nation, all because they chose to devote their expertise to federal service.
And after that experience, and throughout the years of my career at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and in government, I continued to witness firsthand the incredible impact of the EPA Office of Research and Development in Washington, D.C., and across the country.
What Does the Office Do?
The Research and Development Office is the scientific research arm of the EPA. Its scientists research and communicate the science that serves as the foundation for public health protections for the nation. The office’s work informs decisions on issues that affect our health: from groundbreaking work on the cumulative impacts of pollution on our bodies, to advancing detection and prevention of water and soil pollution, to air quality monitoring and modeling advances, and the integration of climate change and its effects across disciplines.
Despite a long record of world-class research and demonstrated success in its mission, the Trump administration has indicated plans to close the Research and Development Office. But the scientific community won’t stand by while this critical office is at risk of being dismantled.
Earlier this spring, UCS organized and delivered a sign-on letter from 54 scientific societies representing more than 100,000 scientists, demanding that Congress protect and restore life-saving and essential scientific research that benefits families and communities in the U.S.—including the research done by the Research and Development Office.
U.S. Science Is in Danger
The threats to this specific office join a growing list of attacks on federal research activities at large. At the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which conducts medical research and funds such projects at other institutions, measures implemented by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) are hindering federal scientists’ ability to do their jobs within the agency. Cuts to NIH funding for more than 2,500 universities, medical schools, and other research institutions across the country have resulted in canceled clinical trials and studies on diseases, job losses for promising young researchers, and an abrupt end to any research that doesn’t align with the Trump administration’s incoherent preferences.
How amazing, I thought, to be the first to look at a dataset like that, and to have the potential to discover something new that might help us better protect people from harmful pollution.
Cuts to federal funding of academic research are threatening to upend the U.S. university research enterprise and set back the infrastructure and people supporting U.S.-produced science and research by decades. Already, the global reputation of the United States as a scientific powerhouse, where scientists from countries around the world come to learn and make discoveries freely, is in tatters.
Shutting down the research operations of the federal government means closing the door on bright-eyed students like me and other early career researchers, limiting their options in this country (and in many cases, driving them to work abroad). It means missed opportunities to bring young talented scientists into government, creating a brain drain with lasting effects. Shutting down research means chipping away at the scaffolding that upholds federal policy decisions across issue areas, and threatening our ability to make evidence-based policy choices as a nation. And that’s why we cannot allow this to happen.
For Policy Decisions Today and Scientific Progress Tomorrow
As an intern with the EPA Research and Development Office, my project that summer was to analyze air pollution measurements collected in Detroit neighborhoods. The study was intended to help us better understand people’s exposure to air pollution—near roads, in their homes, in the central city, and everywhere in between. How amazing, I thought, to be the first to look at a dataset like that, and to have the potential to discover something new that might help us better protect people from harmful pollution. The sense of wonder I experienced in that lab sparked a personal mission to apply science to help people that has carried me throughout my career.
I think of the wealth of science that’s been produced, the many evidence-based environmental policy decisions made, and the lives saved from air pollution standards in the years since that summer. We’ve come a long way since I was an ambitious young researcher on that tree-covered campus. We can’t give up now. Join us in fighting against these attacks with our Save Science, Save Lives campaign.
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