The foundation upon which federal government regulators have been empowered to impose climate communism is officially being been ripped away. Thanks (yet again) to the election of Donald Trump and his appointment of Lee Zeldin as EPA Administrator, the Environmental Protection Agency has announced that it is implementing actions to rescind the 2009 “Endangerment Finding.”
As explained by our friends at The Heartland Institute in a press release this week:
The Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007 authorized the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases if the agency made the determination that global warming harms human health. In an appearance on the Ruthless Podcast this week, Zeldin said reversing the Endangerment Finding would be the “most significant deregulatory action in U.S. history.”
In other words, our rulers in robes at the Supreme Court decreed in 2007 that if the EPA were to determine that global warming, caused by “greenhouse gases,” endangers health, then the governing mechanisms of the United States that are found in the Constitution could be suspended. Thereafter, the EPA could assume command-and-control regulatory powers over every aspect of economic activity, so long as those activities involved “greenhouse gases.” Coincidentally, when you breathe, you are exhaling CO2, a “greenhouse gas.”
Conveniently enough, once Barack Obama became President in 2009, his EPA promptly ruled that “greenhouse gases in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” This became known as the “Endangerment Clause.” This clause took specific aim at gasoline powered cars in stating that “greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution that threatens public health and welfare.”
The Endangerment Clause was the moment when the climate cult started worshiping electric vehicles, and regulators started working to mandate them. July 29, 2025 was the date that Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin put a stop to the madness.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin released the agency’s proposal to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which has been used to justify over $1 trillion in regulations, including the Biden-Harris Administration’s electric vehicle (EV) mandate. If finalized, the proposal would 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.
“With this proposal, the Trump EPA is proposing to end sixteen years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers,” said EPA Administrator Zeldin. “In our work so far, many stakeholders have told me that the Obama and Biden EPAs twisted the law, ignored precedent, and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year.”
This is a joyous moment. There is more work to do, but Trump and Zeldin have proved that they relish the battle.
Rather than come up with my own closing summary, I am simply going to quote Research Fellow Linnea Lueken from that same Heartland press release.
“The obsession over a trace gas is absurd, antiscientific, and has led to pain for Americans in the form of higher energy bills, overregulation of appliances, agriculture, and more. Basically, the Endangerment Finding gave unaccountable government agencies the ability to have a say over whatever they wanted, since every human activity results in the production of carbon dioxide. It never should have happened. The government should never have tried regulating a gas essential for life in the first place.”
[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]