The East Wing isn’t the only Washington landmark feeling the wrecking ball. The agency formerly tasked with environmental protection continues to demolish regulations designed to protect Americans from chronic exposure to toxic pollutants, trash decades of health data and analysis, and remove climate science from the regulatory framework. 

In rare situations when the current EPA balks at rolling back regulations, the White House is stepping in. Late in 2025, the administration issued a presidential proclamation that used an obscure clause in the Clean Air Act to claim a “national security” rationale to grant an exemption from pollution standards in the 2024 Coke Ovens Rule. The rule required workplace protections and fenceline monitoring at 11 U.S. facilities in which bituminous coal is superheated to produce metallurgical coke, used to manufacture steel. Emissions from coke ovens include numerous carcinogenic compounds, and the EPA began regulating them in 1993; in 2023, the agency estimated the annual emissions were around 2,400 tons. 

After postponing the compliance deadline last year to gather public comment, the EPA announced in October 2025 that compliance was possible without unreasonable expense or delay, using available technologies. Six weeks later, the White House issued a presidential proclamation overriding its own agency’s decision. Environmental and grassroots community groups have filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the President exceeded his authority and abused the national security clause in the Clean Air Act by issuing the exemption, a device he has now used in seven separate instances to exempt coal-fired power plants, chemical manufacturers and other industries from emissions standards.  

This year, the EPA has delivered broader attacks on the scientific principles that underpin a range of critical environmental protections. First, the agency announced in January that it will no longer calculate the monetary value of health and environmental benefits in the cost-benefit analyses associated with proposed regulations. Costs to industry for pollution-reducing compliance will still be expressed in dollars and cents, but the benefits—health outcomes, longevity, productivity and quality of life—will no longer be quantified. 

This decision negates decades of regulatory practice at the EPA dating back to the Reagan administration, and invalidates a large body of peer-reviewed public health research that has helped quantify the negative health impacts of various types of pollution and, conversely, the money saved through reduction of toxic emissions. Research has shown that enforcement of the Clean Air Act has a benefit-to-cost ratio of 30 to 1. Numerous epidemiological studies have demonstrated the link between long-term exposure to fine particulate pollution, associated with the burning of fossil fuels, and higher asthma rates, heart attacks, dementia and premature death. One of the most foundational, published in 1993, is the Harvard School of Public Health’s 15-year “Six Cities” study, which followed a cohort of 8,000 adults living in six cities selected to represent the range of levels of PM 2.5 (fine particulate matter, defined as particles that are 2.5 microns or less in diameter) pollution. The study showed that people exposed to higher levels of PM 2.5 in the more polluted cities had higher rates of cardiopulmonary and lung cancer mortality. Subsequent studies have confirmed and expanded those results.    

In February, the EPA tossed out the scientific finding that has served as the legal rationale for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Known as the Endangerment Finding, the 2009 rule acknowledged the strong scientific evidence that emissions of six key greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs)—are damaging to human health, and that climate change itself threatens health and welfare. The finding cited the health impacts of direct temperature effects in the form of increasingly severe and more frequent heat waves, and the related effects on air quality, which can cause or worsen health conditions like bronchitis, emphysema and asthma.

The Endangerment Finding relied on a 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, which ruled that greenhouse gases should be considered as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.  In the 15 years since the finding was adopted, more than 29,000 peer-reviewed studies have documented the connections between climate and health and specific pathways for harm, including the increasing frequency and severity of climate-related events such as heat waves, hurricanes, wildfires, water-borne and vector-borne diseases, famine and even mental health harms related to anxiety and displacement. 

All of these decisions will be challenged in court and, in that arena, the Federal Judicial Center, an agency chaired by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts that advises federal judges on scientific and technical matters, has taken preemptive action by deleting the entire 90-page section on climate science from its “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence.” This leaves judges without officially vetted information to help them evaluate evidence presented in climate-related cases. The change was made under pressure from a group of Republican state attorneys general, the Federalist Society and Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee, who threatened a congressional investigation. 

In the climate debate, we’ve gone from “show me the proof” to “oops, I didn’t know you had proof” to “I refuse to look at your proof” to “I will make your proof disappear.” Science itself is now an endangered species.