The announcement, made alongside Zeldin, marks the administration’s latest and most consequential climate rollback yet. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
February 12, 2026 3:30 PM, EST
Key Takeaways:
- The Trump administration repealed the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding that determined greenhouse gases threaten human health.
- The move also eliminates federal greenhouse gas standards for vehicles and is expected to face significant legal challenges.
- Environmental groups called the repeal the largest attack on federal climate authority in U.S. history.
President Donald Trump announced his administration has rescinded the endangerment finding, a landmark scientific determination that greenhouse gases pose a threat to human health and welfare.
“Under the process just completed by the EPA, we are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding, a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry, and massively drove up prices for American consumers,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
The 2009 determination serves as the legal foundation for a variety of climate rules, including federal climate standards for cars and trucks, regulations that were also overturned Feb. 12. Trump said he was also repealing greenhouse gas standards for vehicles.
“This action will eliminate over $1.3 trillion of regulatory cost and help bring car prices tumbling down dramatically,” Trump said. “You’re going to get a better car.”
(Bloomberg Television via YouTube)
The official rule repeals, which have been telegraphed for months, lay the groundwork for unwinding more federal climate regulations, experts say. The Feb. 12 announcement, made alongside Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, marks the administration’s latest and most consequential climate rollback yet.
Earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt framed the move as “the largest deregulatory action in American history.”
Environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund, have pledged to challenge the decision in court. The EPA’s endangerment finding repeal is “the single biggest attack in U.S. history on federal authority to tackle the climate crisis,” said NRDC president Manish Bapna. “It is unscientific, bad economics, and it’s illegal.”
This announcement comes on the heels of the agency ending a longstanding policy to calculate the monetary savings in avoided deaths from cutting certain air pollutants when crafting some new rules. Earlier this month, Trump also withdrew the U.S. from multiple prominent UN bodies working on global climate cooperation, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
