EPA Enforcement Falls to Record Low Under Trump 2.0

Data suggests that EPA and the Department of Justice have all but abandoned pursuing complex, high-impact cases involving serious violations that threaten public health and the environment. Photo: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website (United States government work).

Backgrounder: EPA Enforcement Falls to Record Low Under Trump 2.0

By Joseph A. Davis

Repealing environmental laws is such hard work. It’s much easier, the second Trump administration has found, to simply stop enforcing them. 

Clean Air Act? Clean Water Act? Think of them more as guidelines than laws.

Three recent studies looking at the enforcement record of the first year of the current Trump administration have found it at a record low. 

One is by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative, which started as a data-rescue project, a nonprofit whose members are academics and former EPA officials. 

Another is by the Environmental Integrity Project, which was started by former EPA enforcement head Eric Schaeffer.

Yet another report reaching similar conclusions comes from the whistleblower group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

All three of the reports started with data from the EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online database — a vital tool every environmental journalist should know about and use.

 

High-impact cases all but abandoned

The enforcement of environmental laws matters. For example, researchers say air pollution of all kinds causes between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths annually in the United States.

EIP’s finding? “Data suggests that EPA and the Department of Justice have all but abandoned pursuing complex, high-impact cases involving serious violations that threaten public health and the environment.”

You may remember that, during the 2024 campaign, Trump invited some oil executives and lobbyists to Mar-a-Lago. He told them that if they donated $1 billion to his campaign, he would roll back environmental rules that hindered their industry. 

Even though they may not have given that much, Trump is paying them back.

Lee Zeldin, Trump’s EPA head, announced shortly after taking office his “Powering the Great American Comeback” initiative, which he said would “achieve the agency’s mission while energizing the greatness of the American economy.” The environment? More of an afterthought.

 

‘Environmental law enforcement suffered

a dramatic collapse in the first year

of the second Trump Administration.’

                — Environmental Integrity Project

 

The EIP report put it this way: “Environmental law enforcement suffered a dramatic collapse in the first year of the second Trump Administration.”

The EDGI report reached a similar conclusion: “For some of its most important enforcement responsibilities, the track record of the Trump 2.0 EPA in 2025 is the worst of any administration in the last 20 years.”

 

DOJ enforcement staff leaving in droves

The enforcement of major environmental laws has long been complicated. Turns out the EPA has never put many mayors or CEOs in jail. But it could. 

Most often, enforcement cases are settled with a “consent decree” overseen by a judge. The EPA refers the really serious cases to the Department of Justice, where they are prosecuted by the Environment and Natural Resources Division.

Recent news is that cases at that division are gridlocked and that staff are leaving it in droves. About a third of the lawyers have left — which only makes enforcement slower and harder.

Most environmental cases are “civil” rather than “criminal.” That means fines rather than jail time. Most often, settlements are negotiated rather than litigated. Monetary penalties often go to fixing the problem and cleaning up, in large part.

“Civil lawsuits against polluters fell to an historic low in the year after Inauguration Day, with only 16 complaints filed since January 20, 2025,” the EIP reported. Likewise, “Settlements of lawsuits against polluters likewise fell sharply, from 186 under Obama in 2013 to 40 under Trump in 2025.”

 

‘We’re just beginning to understand

how much damage is being done to

the EPA under this administration.’

                — Christopher Sellers,

                EDGI report lead author

 

According to EDGI lead author Christopher Sellers, a professor of history at Stony Brook University in New York: “We’re just beginning to understand how much damage is being done to the EPA under this administration. Enforcement is one of the most important measures that shows whether or not the EPA is doing its job. Without enforcement, polluters have no incentive to follow the law. What we’re seeing now is an unprecedented undermining of laws that protect the health of the American people.”

 

The ‘energy emergency’ excuse

Trump, on taking office, declared an “energy emergency” and insisted that all agencies promote energy development. 

In March 2025, the EPA’s enforcement office announced that advance approval by a political appointee would be needed for any enforcement action that “would unduly burden or significantly disrupt energy production or power generation.”

EIP’s headline: “Fake ‘Energy Emergency’ Chills Enforcement Efforts.”

It is hard to see an energy emergency as real when the United States is currently the largest exporter of natural gas and the largest producer of crude oil in the world.

Another shift at the Trump 2.0 enforcement office: “compliance first.” That means administrative efforts to persuade, train and help polluters comply with the law instead of taking them to court. 

Kevin Bogardus described this in a December 2025 E&E News piece. The headline: “Trump EPA preaches ‘compliance first.’ Does that mean enforcement last?”

Lax EPA enforcement was prefigured back in the first few months of Trump 2.0. The agency offered polluting companies a multiyear exemption from many Clean Air Act requirements — including air toxics like mercury and ethylene oxide. All they had to do was fire off a quick email to the EPA and ask for it. Hannah Northey reported it in E&E News. 

The EPA isn't the only agency slacking off on enforcement. Look at the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. A May 2025 article by E&E News’ Mike Soraghan reports that pipeline safety enforcement “has fallen to unprecedented lows in the first few months of the Trump administration.”

 

Environmental groups complain

they are feeling pressure from

their base to file more lawsuits

as a way of offsetting the EPA’s laxity.

 

Environmental groups complain they are feeling pressure from their base to file more lawsuits as a way of offsetting the EPA’s laxity. Stephen Lee reported on this for Bloomberg Environment. 

The problem is that the demand is straining the limits of environmental groups’ own staffs. Still, it’s worth noting that most of the major U.S. environmental laws have robust provisions allowing citizen suits when people are not satisfied with the effectiveness of federal enforcement.

Whatever the EPA’s readiness to enforce the laws, its driving away of staff has made enforcement far more difficult. Its failures “have been compounded by the firing, or pressure-driven departures, of thousands of experienced staff at EPA and DOJ, further hollowing out the government’s capacity to hold polluters accountable and protect communities from harm,” EIP concluded. 

The PEER report noted that roughly half the EPA’s enforcement staff have left the agency.

EDGI’s report concluded: “The Trump 2.0 EPA seems determined to fully restore a freedom to pollute that is utterly contrary to the spirit as well as the letter of our nation’s environmental laws.”

[Editor’s Note: For more, see a TipSheet on how lapses in enforcement by Trump's EPA may yield local environment stories. And visit our Trump 2.0 EJWatch special section, with more than four dozen stories on the current administration’s environment and energy policy, plus Trump-related headlines.]

Joseph A. Davis is a freelance writer/editor in Washington, D.C. who has been writing about the environment since 1976. He writes SEJournal Online's TipSheet, Reporter's Toolbox and Issue Backgrounder, and curates SEJ's weekday news headlines service EJToday and @EJTodayNews. Davis also directs SEJ's Freedom of Information Project and writes the WatchDog opinion column.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 11, No. 8. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.