"In his first year back in office, Donald Trump has fundamentally reshaped the Environmental Protection Agency, initiating nearly 70 actions to undo rules protecting ecosystems and the climate.
The agency’s wide-ranging assault on the environment will put people at risk, threatening air and water quality, increasing harmful chemical exposure, and worsening global warming, experts told the Guardian. The changes amount to “a war on all fronts that this administration has launched against our health and the safety of our communities and the quality of our environment,” said Matthew Tejada, the former director of the EPA’s environmental justice program.
“It is an attempt to completely eliminate the EPA and just leave a symbolic husk,” said Tejada, who is now senior vice-president of environmental health at the national green group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Since January last year, Trump’s EPA has launched a total of 66 actions to roll back or weaken environmental rules – a stunning rate of more than one a week – an analysis by the Guardian has found. Based on research by NRDC, that total comprises a wide variety of moves, from issuing rule exemptions for polluters, to shuttering the agency’s research and development office, to initiating efforts to repeal the legal finding underpinning virtually all US climate regulations."
Dharna Noor and Oliver Milman report for the Guardian January 30, 2026.
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