The Trump administration is set this week to repeal the Obama-era “endangerment finding” on which federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions rest.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin are set to formalize a new rule rescinding the emissions ruling in an event scheduled for Thursday.
“This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations. The bulk of the savings will stem from reduced costs for new vehicles, with the EPA projecting average per vehicle savings of more than $2,400 for popular light-duty cars, SUVs, and trucks,” said Leavitt.
Environmental groups have already promised to explore lawsuits as soon as the final rule is signed.
“Lee Zeldin and Donald Trump plan to toss out the endangerment finding on blatantly specious legal grounds, attempting to wish away the Supreme Court’s landmark 2007 holding in Massachusetts v. EPA that the Clean Air Act does cover greenhouse gas pollution,” the Sierra Club said in a press release. “While this rule specifically concerns greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, EPA has made clear that it will do the same for other major sources of climate pollution like power plants.”
EPA Administrator Zeldin began the move to roll back the finding in July, saying that the deregulatory effort was “driving a dagger into the heart of the climate change religion.”
The new rule will “repeal all resulting greenhouse gas emissions regulations for motor vehicles and engines, thereby reinstating consumer choice and giving Americans the ability to purchase a safe and affordable car for their family while decreasing the cost of living on all products that trucks deliver,” the agency said at the time.
The “endangerment finding” was drawn up in 2009 by the EPA under former President Barack Obama. The finding is not a regulation, but a legal determination that greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are a threat to public health and should be regulated. The finding became the basis for a wave of regulations on greenhouse gas emissions that covered power plants, engines, and other common greenhouse gas emitters.
The final rule would rescind emissions standards on motor vehicles and associated compliance programs. It would also remove some mandatory reporting requirements for industries, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The rule would not impact regulations on emissions from power plants, but it would lay the groundwork for future rollbacks of those regulations, officials told WSJ.
This move is just one in an ongoing deregulatory effort by the Trump administration as it relates to alleged climate change. In 2025, President Trump and Congress ended the federal electric vehicle tax credit with the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” repealing provisions that had been expanded under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
Additionally, EPA head Zeldin announced in early 2025 that his agency was poised to take dozens of deregulatory actions that would “roll back trillions in regulatory costs and hidden ‘taxes’ on U.S. families,” according to an EPA press release.