The Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) was founded more than twenty years ago to stand up to an administration that failed to respect or enforce our environmental laws. Since then, we have worked to hold EPA accountable for enforcement of our environmental laws while strengthening the capacity of EPA to fulfill its mission to protect human health and the environment. 

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plays a critical role in protecting human health and the environment by implementing the environmental laws passed by Congress. The EPA develops and enforces science-based pollution standards that are intended to ensure that we have access to clean air and water and our communities are safe and healthy. EPA’s work impacts all of us across the country by ensuring clean water comes out of our taps, the air we breathe is free from harmful pollution, the chemicals in the marketplace are safe, and our lakes and rivers are fishable and swimmable. EPA regulations even save American lives and reduce health care costs.    

At the dawn of the first Trump Administration, EIP launched EPA Watch to spotlight and fight back against the Administration’s rollbacks of public health and environmental protections. 

During the next four years, EIP will continue our efforts to ensure transparency and accountability within the Trump EPA. Our multi-disciplinary team will bring efforts to undermine the agency into the sunlight, counter disinformation, and ensure that science, not industry favor, drives EPA actions. Our lawyers are prepared to take targeted legal action against reckless regulatory rollbacks that would harm the climate and communities suffering from air and water pollution while also taking companies that violate the law to court to fill enforcement gaps left by EPA.   

You can follow these actions and how we’re fighting back on this web page and in EIP’s social media feeds (Instagram | Facebook | Bluesky | X | Threads | LinkedIn) and in our Oil & Gas Watch. 

Additional Trackers

You can follow the Harvard Regulatory Tracker, the Columbia Law School web page on climate rollbacks and Inflation Reduction Act Tracker, the Brookings Center Regulation and Markets Regulatory Tracker, and the NYU Plastics Litigation Tracker to keep up with the latest Trump Administration actions.

Anonymous Tip Form 

Use this anonymous form to send tips and provide information to the Environmental Integrity Project’s EPA Watch program for our researchers and attorneys to investigate for potential wrongdoing, abuse of power, or other causes for concern at EPA under the second Trump Administration. Your submission will be completely anonymous. 

The Threat to Climate, Public Health, and the Environment 

While President Biden restored environmental rules and policies that were derailed by the first Trump Administration and took steps to increase environmental enforcement, Trump’s return to the Oval Office will imperil this progress. In his first term, Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations important to safeguarding people and the planet. While many of these efforts were stalled or overturned in the courts, Trump and the Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project have pledged to dismantle legal protections that protect the environment and communities from air and water pollution, end America’s commitments to fight climate change, and severely undermine environmental enforcement and federal oversight.

The Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project, a conservative plan for Trump’s second term produced by the Heritage Foundation, provides a blueprint for the Administration’s plans: weakening climate and environmental standards, eroding science-based decision-making, shutting down EPA’s enforcement office, making it easier for large sources of pollution to be permitted, and ending EPA’s commitment to reducing air and water pollution in communities of color and low-income communities.  

Nominee for Administrator of EPA  

Trump selected former New York GOP congressman, Lee Zeldin, as Nominee for Administrator of EPA for the start of his second term. Zeldin has thin environmental policy experience and no experience managing an agency. In choosing him, Trump opted for loyalty over someone with deep environmental policy experience and the qualifications necessary to navigate the complex public health and environmental challenges facing the country.

Upon being chosen by Trump, Zeldin said that pursuing “energy dominance” is one of three top priorities in leading the EPA. “It is an honor to join President Trump’s cabinet as EPA administrator. We will restore U.S. energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the U.S. the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.” Zeldin said in a statement on X on November 11, 2024. 

EPA Enforcement and Project 2025 

During the first Trump Administration, EPA inspections, penalties, and the enforcement of environmental laws fell significantly, worsening a long-term decline in enforcement activity that began approximately twenty years ago. Another dramatic drop in EPA enforcement – especially in neighborhoods of color and low-income communities hardest hit by pollution – could unfold during Trump’s second term if Trump implements Project 2025 recommendations.

Trump’s transition team and allies at Project 2025 are calling for deep cuts, including the elimination of EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance and environmental justice programs, the relocation of EPA’s headquarters out of Washington D.C., and the shifting of responsibilities to state environmental agencies, which have also suffered from budget and staffing reductions over the years.  For 20 years of data on declining enforcement at EPA, click here. 

The Project 2025 Presidential Transition Report also calls for the disbanding of EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (OEJECA), which under Biden has worked to focus more federal pollution control efforts in historically marginalized communities of color and lower-income neighborhoods that have been hurt the most by industrial pollution. Project 2025 also advises the Trump EPA to take less of a leadership role in protecting the environment, and instead defer to the states. “EPA’s structure and mission should be greatly circumscribed to reflect the principles of cooperative federalism and limited government,” Project 2025 states

Trump Issues Executive Orders to Fast-Track Fossil Fuel Projects 

On Inauguration Day, Trump released a flurry of executive orders aimed at rolling back Biden’s climate and environmental programs, ending subsidies for electric vehicles, pulling out of the international Paris climate agreement, and encouraging more drilling on federal lands, offshore, and in Alaska.

One of the executive orders seeks to fast-track the approval of major fossil fuel energy projects by declaring there is a “national energy emergency,” even though there is no factual basis for an “emergency” because oil and gas production in the U.S. soared to record-breaking levels during the Biden Administration.

Another order, titled “unleashing American energy,” requires federal agencies to review existing regulations and then suspend, revise, or rescind any that are identified as barriers to domestic energy development. The order defines energy only as “oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, biofuels, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources,” but excludes wind and solar, failing to reflect that clean energy production in the U.S. doubled between 2000 and 2022 and these additional sources of energy have played a critical role in the nation’s mix of lower cost and reliable energy, according to a Harvard Law School analysis.

Industry Lobbyists Hired to Run EPA

During his first week, President Trump began staffing the top ranks of EPA with several former lobbyists and lawyers for the chemical, oil and other industries, many of whom worked to weaken pollution control regulations both for their clients in private practice and also during the first Trump Administration.

“It’s alarming to see former industry lobbyists and attorneys who, until recently, were paid by their clients to weaken pollution standards, nominated to high-ranking positions at E.P.A. where they will have the power to undermine regulations meant to protect the public from these same industries,” Jen Duggan, Executive Director of the Environmental Integrity Project, told The New York Times in a report about the hires.

Among the former industry advocates that Trump picked to run EPA are David Fotouhi, an attorney who worked for auto industry and challenged a ban on asbestos, which is a potent and proven carcinogen; Alex Dominguez, a former oil lobbyist who will work on standards for car and truck emissions; and Aaron Szabo, a lobbyist for both the chemical and oil industries was picked by Trump to be EPA’s top air pollution regulator. Nancy Beck, a former chemical industry lobbyist, was picked to run the section of EPA that evaluates the safety of chemicals.

Also joining EPA is Lynn Ann Dekleva, who formerly worked for the American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group. She spent more than 30 years at chemical giant DuPont, a company that manufactures “forever chemicals,”  also known as PFAS, that are the subject of EPA regulations because they have been linked to cancer and other health problems.  

The Trump Administration also picked Abigale Tardif to join EPA’s air pollution office, after lobbying for Marathon Petroleum and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and working as a  policy analyst for Americans for Prosperity, part of the conservative network of groups founded by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers.

Also joining the EPA under Trump are: Steven Cook, who was a lawyer for chemical and oil refining company LyondellBasell; Chad McIntosh, a former Ford executive;  Jessica Kramer, who  lobbied on behalf of Duke Energy, Talos Energy and LG Chem; and Justin Schwab, who provided legal services to the Southern Co. power company.

On February 6, 2025, the Trump EPA placed employees of the agency’s Office of Environmental Justice on administrative leave, signaling an intent to close the office. The administration also took down an online public database called “EJScreen” that had provided data on the race and income of people living near large industrial sources of air and water pollution.

EIP will be monitoring EPA activities and is ready to take action when health or environmental protections are threatened.