The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has submitted a proposal to scrap a years-old finding that greenhouse gas emissions threaten the environment and public health. 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,” said Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA administrator from 2001 to 2003 under President George W. Bush.
The EPA finalized what 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.
“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 Joe 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, Goffman stated.
This is just the latest move by the Trump administration to weaken the EPA. The White House also recently closed its scientific research arm, known as the Office of Research and Development (ORD).
ORD conducts critical research to “safeguard human health and ecosystems from environmental pollutants,” according to its website. More than 1,500 employees, including scientists and researchers, are dispersed across the country at 11 different locations, but the bulk are based at the EPA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., and at a large scientific facility in Research Triangle Park here in North Carolina.
The EPA had 16,155 employees back in January 2025, but following actions by the Trump administration, it is now down to 12,488 employees– a reduction of about 22%. The staffing cuts include 3,201 employees who took the Trump administration’s so-called “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation program, as well as those who took early retirement.
The ORD’s research touches on a range of issues from PFAS, often referred to as “forever chemicals,” to water-borne diseases, soot in the air, and environmental factors that contribute to childhood asthma.
“Today’s cuts dismantle one of the world’s most respected environmental health research organizations,” said Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, former EPA principal deputy assistant administrator for science.
“Reducing its workforce under the guise of cost savings is both misleading and dangerous,” Orme-Zavaleta continued.
“This does not save taxpayers money; it simply shifts costs to hospitals, families, and communities left to bear the health and economic consequences of increased pollution and weakened oversight. The people of this country are not well served by these actions. They are left more vulnerable.”
