6 Ways Repealing The EPA’s Intrusive ‘Endangerment Finding’ Will Make Americans’ Lives Better
The Endangerment Finding is the foundation enabling climate rules like mandating electric vehicles or causing coal fired power plant closuresThe Endangerment Finding is the foundation enabling climate rules like mandating electric vehicles or causing coal fired power plant closuresZeldin closes Biden’s climate museum over massive taxpayer waste
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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Judge or activist? Trump CLASHES with another judge over climate funding
Almost as if it’s the judiciary's only purpose, another activist judge is attempting to block President Donald Trump from cutting the government's frivolous spending of taxpayer dollars.
This time it’s Judge Tanya Chutkan, the D.C. judge who rejected President Trump’s presidential immunity in the January 6 case — and she’s doing everything she can to keep climate change funding on the board.
“You could say she’s an activist just cosplaying as a judge,” Sara Gonzales of “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered” comments. “She’s trying to halt EPA chief Lee Zeldin from shutting down the Biden billion-dollar pipeline to environmental extremist groups.”
“She has ordered President Trump to let Citibank keep all of this gravy train going, and this taxpayer money, your money,” Gonzales continues, “is going to activist groups like Power Forward, which is connected to election denier Stacey Abrams and the corrupt Climate United Fund.”
“This is over 20 billion of our dollars that Lee Zeldin is trying to get back,” she adds, noting that Zeldin has more than enough reason to be fighting for it.
“An extremely disturbing video circulated two months ago, featuring a Biden EPA political appointee talking about how they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic, rushing to get billions of your tax dollars out the door before Inauguration Day,” Zeldin said in a video address to the American people.
“The gold bars were tax dollars, and tossing them off the Titanic meant the Biden administration knew they were wasting it. Following this revelation, during my meetings with members of Congress, I made a very important commitment to them and to the American people, which I reiterated at my confirmation hearing,” he continued.
“That if confirmed, I would immediately get a full accounting. Fortunately, my awesome team at EPA has found the gold bars. Shockingly, roughly 20 billion of your tax dollars were parked at an outside financial institution by the Biden EPA,” he added.
While Gonzales is grateful for Zeldin’s action, she’s not surprised.
“It’s not shocking to me that these Democrat activists who are in disguise, whether they’re a judge or they’re a Chuck Schumer, whoever, it doesn’t shock me that they hate the fact that we have an administration that is trying to root out a bunch of corruption and fraud and waste,” Gonzales says.
“But what is shocking to me, is that they are so forthright about it, they are so in your-face about it, they think that this is going to go over well with the American people, that they are trying to prevent President Trump,” she continues, “from doing the things that he said he was going to do.”
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Biden admin hindered efforts to cancel grants to climate groups under criminal investigation
In the wake of President Donald Trump's landslide electoral victory, the Biden administration apparently reworked an Environmental Protection Agency grant agreement with an Obama administration staffer's climate alarmist group in order to make it difficult for the incoming administration to reclaim a $7 billion award.
Climate United Fund, one of the recipients of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program that is now under criminal investigation and getting axed by the Trump EPA, is now apparently exploiting that strategic hindrance in a desperate effort to get its hands on the money promised by the Biden administration.
Background
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency announced the discovery last month that the Biden administration parked roughly $20 billion at Citibank as part of a climate-branded scheme created under the Inflation Reduction Act that was "purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight" for the benefit of fellow travelers.
The agency indicated on March 2 that it was cooperating with the Department of Justice and FBI's ongoing criminal investigation into the matter and that it had also referred the "concerning matter of financial mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and oversight failures" in the GGRF program to the EPA's Office of Inspector General.
One of the intended recipients of the funds was a new nonprofit linked to staunch Biden ally Stacey Abrams, the failed gubernatorial candidate who sided with alleged domestic terrorists in 2023 and was slapped in January with what the Georgia State Ethics Commission indicated was likely "the largest Ethics Fine ever imposed by any State Ethics Commission in the country related to an election and campaign finance case."
The Abrams-linked nonprofit, Power Forward Communities, was awarded a $2 billion grant last year as part of the GGRF program despite being just a few months old and having no history of competently managing funds.
Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of the energy advocacy organization Power the Future, told Blaze News that the obligation of billions of taxpayer dollars to PFC and other brand-new climate groups with minimal or no track records of accomplishments "screams corruption and is absolutely worthy of IRS and DOJ investigations."
'EPA has determined that these deficiencies pose an unacceptable risk to the efficient and lawful execution of this grant.'
"I've always enjoyed the show 'Shark Tank,' and since I spend about half my life on the road and I'm in hotels a lot, it's kind of my go-to program to watch at nighttime," said Turner. "The sharks always ask about earnings before they make an investment, and that's usually where they will decide what they're going to do. Stacey Abrams' group had received $100 in donations and then got a $2 billion grant. The math tells me that that is a 20 million-times earnings investment. I've never never seen a shark make an investment at 20 million times earnings."
"It shows you the frivolity of the people in these agencies, the true political nature of grant-making, and it also explains the ire these folks have towards Elon Musk and DOGE — the ire that's turned into complete violence," continued Turner. "This is their lifeblood, and it's being taken away from them, but it never should have been theirs to begin with."
Climate United Fund's money troubles
Climate United Fund, an organization formed in 2024 and led by Beth Bafford, a former special assistant in the Obama administration's Office of Management and Budget, similarly planned to ride the last gravy train out of the Biden administration.
According to court documents, the FBI recommended that Citibank freeze CUF's account in late February, citing "credible information" that it was among a number of accounts that had "been involved in possible criminal violations" including wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
On March 4, the Treasury Department directed Citibank not to disburse funds from the GGRF accounts, including that belonging to CUF, citing the EPA's "concerns regarding potential fraud and/or conflicts of interest related to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund."
When it discovered that it couldn't drain its slush fund and that it might not ultimately receive any of its $6.97 billion GGRF award, CUF — like other groups impacted by the EPA's funding freeze and grant terminations — filed a lawsuit on March 8 against both the EPA and Citibank, alleging that the "EPA has acted to prevent Citibank from dispersing [sic] funds, harming Climate United, its borrowers, and the communities they serve."
The EPA, which proved willing to battle it out in the court, subsequently notified the plaintiffs that it was terminating their grants, stating that "following a comprehensive review and consistent with multiple ongoing independent federal investigations into programmatic fraud, waste, abuse, and conflicts of interest ... EPA has determined that these deficiencies pose an unacceptable risk to the efficient and lawful execution of this grant."
'They're just fighting for their own entity's survival because they don't want to get a real job.'
According to the grant agreement between the climate groups and the EPA, the awards can be terminated only if:
- "a grant recipient engages in 'substantial' noncompliance such that 'effective performance' is 'materially impaired'";
- "a recipient engages in 'material misrepresentation of eligibility status'"; or
- "for 'waste, fraud, or abuse.'"
An Obama judge ruled Tuesday that the EPA could not reclaim the Biden-era grants. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan did not, however, enable CUF and other climate alarmist groups to withdraw the billions of taxpayer dollars they believe they are owed.
The climate groups' efforts to get their hands on the taxpayer funds have dragged some questionable details about the grants into the light.
EPA's diminished agency
Sarah Bedford of the Washington Examiner highlighted that a month after Trump crushed Kamala Harris at the polls, the Biden Environmental Protection Agency amended its grant agreement with Climate United Fund, making it harder to revoke the award.
Eric Amidon, chief of staff of the EPA, noted in a Monday court filing that the agency's grant agreement with CUF originally issued in August did not "define the terms 'materially impaired' or 'waste, fraud, and abuse,' and used the terms in a manner that left EPA with significant discretion to administer the agreement." However, Amidon noted that in December 2024, the EPA issued an amended grant agreement to CUF that altered its compliance and termination provisions and defined the above terms.
As a consequence of the changes, the EPA effectively lost its contractual authority "to find CUF in immediate noncompliance for failing to report the expenditure of grant funds, audit results, and project status"; "to oversee subrecipient compliance with statutory, regulatory, and contractual requirements"; and to spend grant funds only on allowable activities," said Amidon.
Amidon also indicated that the Biden administration's post-election definitions for "materially impaired" and "waste, fraud, and abuse" further tied the EPA's hands, restricting the agency's ability to terminate the award "absent evidence of severe criminal or civil violations."
Climate United Fund has leaned on the agreement in its lawsuit against the EPA and Citibank.
"This is absolutely intentional," Turner told Blaze News, referring to the broader alleged "gold bars" plot. "This was all very deliberate in preparation for what the Trump administration would do."
Brent Efron, a former EPA special adviser for implementation, was caught on hidden camera before Trump took office claiming that the agency was dumping billions of dollars in grants to nonprofits to make sure the Biden administration's climate initiatives remained afloat even after the Democrats lost their footing in the White House.
"Now it's how to get the money out as fast as possible before they [Trump administration] come in," said Efron. "It's like we're on the Titanic and we're throwing gold bars off the edge."
"In the grants process, grants can always be amended by the grantor. I deal with donors who want to fund certain projects, and circumstances change, and therefore the nature of the grant changes. That's understandable," said Turner. "But it's never been about an election, and that's the only criteria that changed with some of these groups that were awarded grants — Trump was now going to be president. And so it does raise a larger question: What was the grant ever about? What was the grant's nature? Because if it was combatting racial disparities in the climate space or whatever the phraseology they used, none of that has changed. Only thing that changed was the political circumstances, and so changing the grant based on politics sort of de facto proves that the nature of the grant is purely political."
Turner suggested that the groups now fighting over the frozen slush fund are "fighting for the quality of life that the taxpayers were awarding them. They're not fighting for groups. They're not fighting for maligned or marginalized individuals. They're just fighting for their own entity's survival because they don't want to get a real job."
Blaze News reached out to the EPA for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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EV mandate killed in 'biggest day of deregulation in American history'
"The greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen."
That's what Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin said of today's announcement that the onerous fuel efficiency standards opponents have called a de facto electric vehicle mandate will be rescinded.
'The American auto industry has been hamstrung by the crushing regulatory regime of the last administration.'
That includes 31 specific regulatory rollbacks designed to unleash American energy, lower the cost of living, boost the domestic auto industry, and give more power back to the states.
Putting the brakes on inflation
The first step: using the Administrative Procedures Act to re-evaluate policies enacted last year by the Biden administration to reduce emissions for light-, medium-, and heavy-duty vehicles. This would have increased the costs of shipping goods, with estimated regulatory and compliance costs of over $700 billion.
That gets passed on to the consumer.
On day one, President Trump signed a series of executive orders on energy policies that he said would tackle inflation after consumer costs soared by 22% during former President Biden’s term in office.
Protect consumer choice
One of President Trump’s executive orders also included reversing a policy that pushed carmakers to make 50% of their output electric vehicles by 2030, which would increase costs and limit consumer choices.
The ultimate goal was to go 100% EV by 2032 — something our power grid simply cannot support.
In March 2024, the Biden administration finalized a rule to require carmakers to dramatically reduce carbon emissions beginning for model year 2027 light- and medium-size vehicles. This is why car prices have increased to an average of $50,000 for gas cars and $66,000 for electric vehicles.
“The American auto industry has been hamstrung by the crushing regulatory regime of the last administration,” Zeldin told the New York Post.
President Trump campaigned on scrapping Biden’s fuel efficiency rules by arguing that consumers should have the options of buying hybrid, gasoline-powered, or diesel-powered vehicles without government interference or mandate.
Waiver bye-bye?
On February 15, 2025, Lee Zeldin, chair of the EPA, sent the California's Clean Air Act waiver (which is directly connected to the Advanced Clean Cars II regulation) to Congress for review.
We are waiting for this to go to a vote, and we will report to you on the votes and results.
The CRA states that if this is passed, the EPA and federal government cannot reattempt to approve this rule. The process allows the vote to come to the floor in an expedited fashion, forcing all members to go on the record with their votes.
If Congress votes to undo a rule, the agency cannot propose a similar regulation. It would require an act of congress to override the CRA.
To summarize:
The EPA takes its biggest action ever to help President Trump save Americans trillions of dollars, lower the cost of living, and make it more affordable to buy a car, heat a home, or operate a business. And it will boost job growth!
Welcome to the golden age of America!
Trump EPA going on deregulation spree that's already hurting climate alarmists' feelings
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it is planning to undertake a sweeping series of deregulatory actions in accordance with President Donald Trump's executive orders and campaign promises.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin identified dozens of Obama and Biden-era regulations that his agency will repeal, stating, "We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S., and more."
In addition to unchaining industry and eliminating some of the bureaucratic red tape that drove up living costs, the agency appears keen to reclaim ground lost to climate alarmists over the past two decades, effectively eliminating the EPA's authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.
'This EPA is planning to take a wrecking ball to environmental law.'
The agency deregulation push includes plans to:
- unwind numerous regulations on power plants, the oil and gas industry, and coal-fired power;
- revise limits, guidelines, and standards for the steam electric power-generating industry;
- reconsider various industrial regulations concerning air standards;
- unwind the mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program that requires big emitters to report their emissions annually for publication;
- reconsider the Risk Management Program rule that purportedly improves chemical accident prevention at facilities that use extremely hazardous substances;
- unwind the vehicle regulations "that provided the foundation for the Biden-Harris electric vehicle mandate";
- reconsider the Obama EPA's 2009 Endangerment Finding and all subsequent actions that rely on its assertion that the combined emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride from motorized vehicles "threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations" — a claim Zeldin said is "considered the Holy Grail of the climate change religion";
- eliminate the remaining DEI initiatives at the agency;
- ensure the death of the Biden administration's controversial "Good Neighbor Plan," which tried to force so-called "upwind" states to curb air pollution impacting "downwind" states — a plan whose standards the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June were likely to cause "irreparable harm" to nearly half the states in the union; and
- utilize "enforcement discretion to further North Carolina’s recovery from Hurricane Helene."
The EPA suggested that these and other deregulatory actions could "roll back trillions in regulatory costs and hidden 'taxes' on U.S. families" as well as create jobs.
Climate alarmists are up in arms over the announcement.
Jason Rylander, legal director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity, told NPR, "This EPA is planning to take a wrecking ball to environmental law as we know it."
"The intent appears to be to neuter EPA's ability to address climate change and to limit air pollution that affects public health," added Rylander.
Amanda Leland, executive director of the leftist international Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement, "EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin today announced plans for the greatest increase in pollution in decades. The result will be more toxic chemicals, more cancers, more asthma attacks, and more dangers for pregnant women and their children. Rather than helping our economy, it will create chaos."
The New York Times indicated that Gina McCarthy, an EPA administrator in the Obama administration, is sad to see some of her handiwork undone, calling it "the most disastrous day in EPA history."
"Rolling these rules back is not just a disgrace, it's a threat to all of us," said McCarthy, who also served as former President Joe Biden's national climate adviser. "The agency has fully abdicated its mission to protect Americans' health and well being."
Democratic lawmakers have similarly denounced the EPA's deregulatory plans.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) stated, "EPA's attacks today on clean air, clean water, and affordable energy are done for the planet's biggest polluters. Americans will pay dearly — with their health and with their wallets.
"This sellout has a long road ahead of it through the Administrative Procedures Act, which we will fight every step of the way," added Whitehouse.
Republicans and others long critical of the burdens of over-regulation celebrated the EPA plan.
Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) called it a "historic move that will bring much-needed relief to Montanans."
West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R), chairwoman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, is apparently thrilled that the EPA is "taking steps towards eliminating job-killing regulations that hamper energy production and harm workers and consumers across our country."
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