The Environmental Protection Agency under President Trump is looking a lot different than the one that existed under Biden after Trump’s rollback of greenhouse gas limits.
The agency is now proposing to repeal all greenhouse gas emissions standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants, which would include requirements set under Biden.
“This is a big deal, because when you think about your electricity bill, when you think about the cost of powering the country, these power plants are a huge part of it,” BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere explains on “Stu Does America.”
“When you limit how they can produce the fuel that you need, you wind up driving up the cost of that energy. That’s why your power bills have probably gone up over the past couple of years,” he continues, noting that the reasoning behind Biden’s requirements were silly in the first place.
“You have to remember that 88% of emissions don’t come from the United States. Everyone’s obsessed with the United States and what we’re driving and what kind of power we’re using, but 88% of global emissions come from other places, not us,” Stu says. “So really, the focus on us just kind of seems to be a little bit more about anti-capitalism than anything else.”
And while 12% of global emissions do come from the United States, 75% of those emissions are coming from sources that are not power plants.
“What we’re talking about here is only 3% of global emissions. A little, tiny slice of a little, tiny slice that comes from coal and natural gas plants,” Stu explains. “And that’s not even the entire picture, because things have been changing, honestly, in a direction that nobody on television wants to tell you about, because everyone wants to scare you.”
“Everyone wants to tell you that the emissions are going crazy, and we’re all going to die, and global warming is coming to town, and it’s going to, you know, going to backhand you across the face, and we’re going to have these terrible storms,” he continues.
In a chart revealing the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2022, the amount continues to drop.
“They’ve been going down since the mid-2000s, not dramatically. Down from 5.5% in 2005,” Stu says. “With the exception, really, of the COVID year, where we had one dramatic drop. And even the dramatic drop, it wasn’t all that dramatic, which kind of tells you something about greenhouse emissions overall.”
“When we basically shut down our economy for a year,” he adds, “we just had a slight drop in greenhouse gas emissions.”
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California leaders are battling to impose the state's radical, costly emissions standards on Americans — potentially across the country.
California's regulatory power, large market, and partnerships with other aligned states give it significant influence over national vehicle emissions standards.
'We need to hold the line on strong emissions standards and keep the waivers in place, and we will sue to defend California's waivers.'
On Thursday, Governor Gavin Newsom (D) and Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) announced that the state plans to file yet another lawsuit against President Donald Trump.
The announcement follows a morning U.S. Senate vote, 51-44, to pass a measure that would revoke three of California's vehicle emissions waivers approved last year under the Biden administration's Environmental Protection Agency.
RELATED: Newsom dips into massive anti-Trump legal fund to sabotage tariffs
Two of the waivers concern tailpipe emissions for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and truck smog requirements. The third requires all new vehicle sales in California to be zero-emissions by 2035.
The state standards are more strict than the federal regulations.
The Clean Air Act granted California the ability to set more stringent standards. However, Republican lawmakers contended that the Congressional Review Act gives Congress the authority to overrule measures implemented by federal agencies like the EPA.
Senate Democrats argued that the Government Accountability Office and Senate parliamentarian found that the act does not give Congress the power to revoke the waivers.
Bonta accused Senate Republicans of "bending the knee" to Trump as the president attempts to slash red tape and unleash American energy.
"The weaponization of the Congressional Review Act to attack California's waivers is just another part of the continuous, partisan campaign against California's efforts to protect the public and the planet from harmful pollution," Bonta continued. "As we have said before, this reckless misuse of the Congressional Review Act is unlawful, and California will not stand idly by. We need to hold the line on strong emissions standards and keep the waivers in place, and we will sue to defend California's waivers."
RELATED: Trump challenges California's emissions standards dictatorship
Newsom called the Senate's vote "illegal."
"Republicans went around their own parliamentarian to defy decades of precedent. We won't stand by as Trump Republicans make America smoggy again — undoing work that goes back to the days of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan — all while ceding our economic future to China. We're going to fight this unconstitutional attack on California in court," Newsom remarked.
Since January, California has taken legal action against Trump's administration 22 times. Newsom set aside $50 million in taxpayer funds to file lawsuits against the administration.
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The Trump administration appears serious about ridding American drinking water of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as "forever chemicals," and penalizing polluters.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced on Monday that his agency will be taking a suite of actions to address PFAS.
"We are tackling PFAS from all of EPA's program offices, advancing research and testing, stopping PFAS from getting into drinking water systems, holding polluters accountable, and providing certainty for passive receivers," Zeldin said in a statement. "This is just a start of the work we will do on PFAS to ensure Americans have the cleanest air, land, and water."
PFAS is a group of roughly 15,000 synthetic chemicals that have been in consumer products since the 1940s. The EPA noted on its website that PFAS "can be present in our water, soil, air, and food as well as in materials found in our homes or workplaces."
A 2015 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that PFAS were found in the blood of approximately 97% of Americans. A 2023 study released from the U.S. Geological Survey indicated PFAS were found in at least 45% of the country's tap water.
Citing the current peer-reviewed scientific literature, the EPA indicated that exposure to PFAS could lead to:
According to the National Institute of Environmental Health Science, studies have also found possible links between PFAS and diminished immune systems, increased risk of childhood obesity, and increased risk of Type 2 diabetes in women.
The EPA has now committed to "strengthening the science, fulfilling statutory obligations and enhancing communication, and building partnerships."
'It's encouraging to see the support of the Trump EPA to express their concerns about PFAS.'
The agency will apparently take 21 actions to address PFAS contamination, such as:
John Rumpler, clean water director and senior attorney at the Environment America Research and Policy Center, expressed optimism Monday about the agency's proposed actions.
"Some of the initiatives announced by EPA could begin to advance Administrator Lee Zeldin's stated objective: 'to ensure Americans have the cleanest air, land, and water,'" stated Rumpler. "These include setting at least some limits on how much PFAS certain industries can release into our waterways, and using our nation's toxic substances law to restrict the use of these chemicals — hopefully in the strong manner that several states have already done."
"On face value, it's encouraging to see the support of the Trump EPA to express their concerns about PFAS," Linda Birnbaum, an American toxicologist who formerly served as director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, told Inside Climate News. "The question is always, what are the devils in the details."
Environmental and health experts are not the only ones cautiously hopeful about the EPA's next steps.
The American Chemistry Council, an industry trade association for chemical companies, said in a statement obtained by Chemical and Engineering News, "While we need to learn more about the details of EPA's announcement, we have consistently advocated for a comprehensive approach to managing PFAS, including for the designation of a point person to coordinate across differing programs and agencies."
"We support strong, science-based regulations for PFAS chemistries that take into account the differences between them, continue to allow for the many products that they enable, and drive domestic manufacturing," added the ACC.
Although the EPA now appears to be largely picking up where the first Trump administration left off with its 2019 PFAS action plan — which called for improving methods and tools for managing PFAS risk, as well as greater enforcement — some notable efforts on this front were made by the Biden administration.
The agency established national, legally enforceable limits last year on PFAS in public drinking water in April 2024. The final EPA rule gave public water systems three years to complete initial monitoring for PFAS contamination. Those who discovered PFAS at levels in excess of federal standards were afforded another five years to reduce the amount.
Despite having years to comply with the April 2024 rule, water utilities and chemical producers filed suit, claiming the government was exceeding its authority in trying to remove dangerous chemicals from municipal water systems.
The New York Times reported that the Trump administration faces a May 12 deadline to decide whether it wants to mount a legal defense of the water standards.
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President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency announced this week that it would either fire or reassign 455 employees in an effort to eliminate the Biden administration's woke programs.
The EPA notified 280 employees that they would be terminated in a "reduction in force," Axios reported. Another 175 staffers responsible for "statutory functions" will be reassigned.
'Getting people back in the office is a priority now.'
Those impacted held "environmental justice" and diversity, equity, and inclusion roles in the agency's Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, Office of Inclusive Excellence, and its regional offices.
An EPA spokesperson told Axios, "EPA is taking the next step to terminate the Biden-Harris Administration's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Environmental Justice arms of the agency."
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has accused the former administration of throwing away $20 billion in taxpayer funds on environmental justice initiatives.
"No matter how hard some try to circle the wagons to defend lighting billions of YOUR tax dollars on fire to be misspent in a $20 BILLION Green Slush Fund, I will not compromise on my ZERO tolerance policy against ANY waste and abuse!" he wrote in a Monday post on social media.
During a Monday press conference, Zeldin addressed efforts to streamline the agency and save taxpayer funds.
"When we came in, we inherited an operation that, for the most part, people weren't even here in the office. COVID-era remote work is over," he stated. "When I came in, I had asked the team, 'How much have employees been coming in since January of 2024?' And the answer is that on Mondays and Fridays, it averaged five to eight percent. The record high attendance was 37%."
"Getting people back in the office is a priority now," Zeldin declared, adding that returning workers to the office would allow the agency to make informed decisions about its real estate footprint.
Zeldin's EPA has already saved American taxpayers roughly $18 million by removing employees from the Ronald Reagan Building and consolidating its office space in Washington, D.C.
The EPA administrator has focused much of his attention this week on addressing the sewage flowing over the border from Mexico into California.
On Tuesday, Zeldin toured a San Diego County plant that treats the sewage from the polluted Tijuana River. He stated that the EPA plans to present Mexico with a list of actions to resolve the issue.
"This is not a U.S.-side answer. I wish that we could resolve this all on our own," Zeldin told KXTV. "There's a lot of needs on the Mexican side."
He said that he spoke with Mexican officials about "chemical treatment" and "diverting 10 million gallons per day from the Tijuana River to the dam."
"We want both sides to sit down and go project by project to talk about the timeline of everything and make sure that every single project is operating on the tightest timeline possible," he added.
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Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Monday announced the closure of the $4 million agency museum built by the Biden administration.
Zeldin referred to the one-room, 1,595-square-foot facility as one of former President Joe Biden's failed "pet projects," noting that during its nine months of operations, it saw fewer than 2,000 external visitors.
'The museum closure represents just one step in our broader commitment to transparency and fiscal responsibility.'
While admission was free to the public, he stated that each visitor cost taxpayers $315.
The museum is located at the EPA's Washington, D.C., headquarters and opened in May 2024. Despite its small size, the facility cost $4 million to open and costs another $600,000 annually.
Zeldin shared a video on X giving a tour of the museum and explaining the decision to shut it down.
He stated that a timeline featured in the museum "conveniently omits" President Donald Trump's first administration. A separate video showed a gap in the timeline between 2014 and 2021.
"This agency has been spending $123,000 on cleaning, $207,000 for security, $54,000 on maintenance, and an additional $54,000 on storage," Zeldin said. "From May 2024 through last month, only 1,909 members of the public visited the museum. Even though it is free admission, this museum costs you, the taxpayer, $315 per external visitor."
He described it as a "shrine to [environmental justice] and climate change."
"Under President Trump, we are ending the practice of burning tax dollars on pet projects," Zeldin declared.
In a Monday op-ed on Fox News, Zeldin stated that he has terminated Biden-era spending that will save taxpayers $22 billion.
Zeldin noted that the money allocated toward the "scarcely visited" museum could have been used by the Biden administration to provide "clean air, land, and water to forgotten communities."
"The museum closure represents just one step in our broader commitment to transparency and fiscal responsibility," Zeldin wrote. "This isn't about diminishing our commitment to environmental protection; it's about enhancing it through responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars. The days of unchecked spending on monuments to the egos of the left are over. Under our leadership, fiscal responsibility and mission focus will guide every decision. The American people deserve nothing less."
Additionally, Zeldin announced on Tuesday that the EPA would be moving out of its D.C. headquarters.
"EPA will be saving American taxpayers $18 MILLION in annual lease costs by moving staff out of the 323,000 square feet of space we occupy in the Ronald Reagan building in D.C.," he stated.
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The D.C. Circuit is essentially the judicial branch version of 'trust the experts,' the only difference being that these judges do not actually have any expert knowledge that makes them more equipped to decide court cases.
President Donald Trump overturned California’s authoritarian ban on gas-powered vehicles on Thursday, signing a resolution approved by Congress last month. California became the first state in the nation to pursue a phase-out of gas-powered cars, attempting to halt all new sales by 2035 and effectively force its citizens to purchase electric vehicles. After Trump’s move, […]
Senate Republicans obviously shouldn’t outsource their legislative prerogatives to the parliamentarian.
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