"In a glimpse at the Trump administration’s tilt toward polluting industries, EPA embraced the aid of manufacturers in easing a new rule." 

"Two years ago, Madeline Darnell cheered on EPA’s plans to require coke manufacturers to track emissions of a cancer-causing air pollutant around their plants. The Pittsburgh retiree had a different reaction to the agency’s recent use of a secretive stratagem to allow the industry up to two more years to comply.

“I was surprised,” she said in an interview.

But if Darnell and the general public were frozen out of the backdoor maneuvering, the handful of companies that make the distilled coal product were fully plugged in as EPA embraced their aid in crafting the case for delay, internal documents show.

The correspondence — only months into President Donald Trump’s second term — offers a revealing glimpse of how the administration’s tilt toward polluting industries plays out in practice."

Sean Reilly reports for E&E News August 21, 2025, [2]