Burning Down the EPA:
Documenting the Second Trump
Administration's Historic Assault

Background

What You Need to Know

Under Administrator Lee Zeldin, the EPA has begun incinerating many of the environmental and health protections this agency has provided for over five decades. Since being sworn in in late January 2025, the Zeldin-led EPA has pledged to unshackle industries from environmental rules and oversight, proposed a record-breaking 54.4% budget cut, and pre-emptively enacted drastic cuts without consulting Congress.

The report Burning Down the EPA — produced by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI), a North American network of academics, nonprofits, and community organizations — breaks down the five tactics employed under Zeldin's leadership and places them in their full historical context. The conclusion is unambiguous: the Zeldin-led EPA has launched the most damaging assault in the agency's 54-year history.

Historical Context

Zeldin and His Precursors

The current assault did not arise in a vacuum. The Zeldin EPA joins the historical ranks of three predecessor administrations that aggressively assaulted the EPA's protective mission — but it intensifies every tactic to unprecedented levels.

This growing polarization is not accidental. Over three decades, party politics have become more partisan on environmental protection, corporate funding of anti-environmental politicians has surged, and trust in science — particularly among Republicans — has eroded sharply since the COVID-19 pandemic. The fossil fuel industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect the current administration and Congress. These structural shifts set the stage for an intensification of attacks on the EPA that would have been politically impossible in earlier eras.

Tactic 1

Deregulating — A Paradox of Claims and Data

Zeldin's press office has boasted of "historic" deregulation. The data tell a different story. Six months into Pruitt's tenure under Trump I, EPA had announced 200 proposed rules and 253 finalized rules in the Federal Register. In the first six months of Zeldin's leadership, only three EPA rules had been proposed, and none finalized. By August 25, 111 additional rule proposals and 114 final rules suddenly appeared — almost all post-dated to the six months before they were formally published.

The flagship initiative behind the "historic deregulation" claims is a proposed revocation of EPA's 2009 endangerment finding — the scientific determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, which provides the legal basis for EPA to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act. If successful, this would indeed be a historic rollback, incinerating over a decade of climate protection built on that foundation.

Tactic 2

Defunding — Bypassing Congress

The FY2026 proposed budget cut of 54.4% far surpasses any previous administration's proposal for this agency. But the budget proposal is only part of the picture. Aided by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Zeldin EPA has enacted many of these cuts without congressional approval, internally freezing or cancelling spending that Congress had already appropriated:

• Over $25 billion in congressionally appropriated funds frozen or cancelled, most from the Inflation Reduction Act
• Contracts and grant programs in Environmental Justice, DEI, and climate change paid for through EPA's own congressionally approved budget appropriations
• This approach challenges Congress's constitutional spending authority under Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution

Tactic 3

Downsizing — Cutting Deeper Than Reagan

Zeldin's office and DOGE have already cut EPA staff by thousands — to at or below its lowest point since the early 1980s — without congressional approval. EDGI estimates the total number of EPA staff reductions by the end of FY2025 to be between 25–33% of total staff. The only historical precedent is the 17% reduction under Gorsuch in the early 1980s — which ended with her dismissal and six years of growth.

The scale of the current cuts is two to three times what the agency itself proposed to Congress in its FY2026 budget request. Through retirement incentives and large reductions in force, Zeldin's office has enacted staffing cuts that Congress has not authorized, approved, or even fully been consulted on.

Tactics 4 & 5

Sidelining Science & Tying the Hands of Staff

Eliminating the Office of Research and Development

EPA's press office has announced the breakup of the agency's Office of Research and Development (ORD). Internal documents suggest this will involve firing two thirds of ORD's 1,500 employees — against bipartisan Senate protest. This goes further than any predecessor administration in directly dismantling the agency's capacity for independent scientific research.

Earlier EPA-hostile administrations — from the G.W. Bush era onward — increasingly targeted EPA science by curbing its use in policy-making, scrubbing websites, and stacking advisory committees with political appointees. Zeldin's elimination of the ORD itself, without congressional consultation, represents a qualitative escalation.

A Workplace at a Standstill

EPA career staff interviewed by EDGI describe a workplace riddled with "intentional inefficiencies" and "malignant neglect" of career-staff leadership by political appointees. This mirrors the historical record of the first Reagan EPA: a "hit list" of targeted employees, "a paranoia that virtually brought work to a standstill," and mass staff departure.

Among the probable early consequences: EPA's regulatory plans for Spring 2025 remain unpublished on the OIRA website, and the agency has hit historic lows in both rules sent to OMB for review and proposed or finalized rules published in the Federal Register.

Implications

What This Means for Environmental and Public Health

The EPA was created in December 1970 under Republican President Richard Nixon in response to a bipartisan consensus that forceful federal action was needed to curb pollution where private industry and piecemeal state-level controls had failed. Its first administrator (a Republican) declared: the agency has "no obligation to promote agriculture or commerce; only the critical obligation to protect and enhance the environment."

The Zeldin EPA has redefined this mission to encompass "tamping down on extreme climate alarmism," "lowering cost of living," and "unshackling industries from environmental obligations." The report's documentation demonstrates that the second Trump administration appears on track to cause greater damage to the EPA and its essential mission than any of its predecessors — at a moment when federal environmental and public health protections are most urgently needed.

For researchers in environmental sociology, science and technology studies, and public health, this report provides an empirically grounded foundation for analyzing the political, institutional, and structural dynamics driving the dismantling of federal environmental governance. The historical comparative framework — tracing continuities and escalations from Gorsuch through Zeldin — offers a model for sociological analysis of state capacity, regulatory rollback, and the politics of environmental protection.