The White House has announced that the US Environmental and Protection Agency (EPA) will on Thursday, February 12, 2026, repeal the “endangerment finding,” a scientific conclusion that greenhouse gases are dangerous to public health and welfare.
The endangerment finding, enacted in 2009, was based on peer-reviewed scientific evidence and required the federal government to regulate emissions from burning oil, coal and gas.
White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called the EPA endangerment finding’s repeal “the largest deregulatory action in American history” and claims that it will “save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations.”
“President Trump will be joined by Administrator Lee Zeldin to formalise the rescission of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding,” Leavitt said in a briefing on Tuesday, February 10. “This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations.”
Known as the endangerment finding, the EPA’s 2009 decision says that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are heating the Earth and that warming threatens public health and welfare. It therefore functions, under the Clean Air Act, as the lynchpin for rules that set emissions standards for cars and trucks and require fossil fuel companies to report their emissions, among others.
The move is expected to upend most U.S. policies aimed at reducing climate pollution – if the repeal can withstand court challenges from environmental groups, which had already been preparing to sue.
The text of the rule repealing the finding has not yet been released, so many details are still unknown.
Rescinding the endangerment finding would almost certainly face legal challenges from environmental groups, and it could be legally tenuous. The endangerment finding has been upheld in court. In 2007, a Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, cleared the way for the finding to be made. The high court declined to hear an appeal challenging the endangerment finding as recently as 2023.
The planned revocation met swift backlash on Capitol Hill from Democrats.
“Let’s be very clear what this announcement represents: it is a corrupt giveaway to Big Oil, plain and simple,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on Tuesday on the Senate floor. “The blast radius of this reckless decision will span from San Diego to Portland, Maine and from Seattle to Miami.”
The status quo has supporters in industry as well.
Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company Tesla urged the administration to uphold the endangerment finding in a September letter to the EPA.
“The Endangerment Finding – and the vehicle emissions standards which flow from it – have provided a stable regulatory platform for Tesla’s extensive investments in product development and production,” Tesla wrote. “Reversing the Endangerment Finding would also deprive consumers of choice and extensive economic benefits, have negative effects on human health, and further impact the integrated North American automotive sector.”
Also, 350.org said that the claimed savings ignore the far greater costs of unchecked climate pollution, pointing out that the long-term social costs of emissions from US companies are estimated to reach $87 trillion.
Anne Jellema, 350.org Executive Director, said: “This isn’t about saving taxpayers’ money, it’s about saving an industry that has already been exposed as a permanent danger to American families.
“Climate denialism will bleed the people dry. While the Trump administration can manipulate scientific agencies, it can never suppress the truth that ordinary people in the US and around the world are paying the real price for Big Oil’s profits: lives are being lost, homes are being destroyed and costs are soaring.
“By giving Big Oil a license to pollute even more, the EPA is defying international law and piling more damage on communities in the US and around the world. But this extraordinary move will only strengthen global demands to make climate polluters pay.”