Trump environmental rollbacks would boost pollution and endanger lives, former EPA heads say

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three former Environmental Protection Agency leaders sounded an alarm Friday, saying rollbacks proposed by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin endanger the lives of millions of Americans and abandon the agency's dual mission to protect the environment and human health.

Zeldin said Wednesday he plans to roll back 31 key environmental rules on everything from clean air to clean water and climate change. Former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy called Zeldin's announcement "the most disastrous day in EPA history.''

The warning by McCarthy, who served under two Democratic administrations, was echoed by two former EPA heads who served under Republican presidents.

Zeldin's comprehensive plan to undo decades-old regulations was nothing short of a “catastrophe” and “represents the abandonment of a long history” of EPA actions to protect the environment, said William K. Reilly, who led the agency under President George H.W. Bush and played a key role in amending the Clean Air Act in 1990.

“What this administration is doing is endangering all of our lives — ours, our children, our grandchildren," added Christine Todd Whitman, who led EPA under President George W. Bush. “We all deserve to have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. If there’s an endangerment finding to be found anywhere, it should be found on this administration because what they’re doing is so contrary to what the Environmental Protection Agency is about.''

Whitman was referring to one of the major actions Zeldin announced: to reconsider a scientific finding that planet-warming greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. The agency’s 2009 finding has been the legal underpinning for most U.S. action against climate change, including regulations for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources.

Environmentalists and climate scientists call the endangerment finding a bedrock of U.S. law and say any attempt to undo it will have little chance of success.

Whitman and the other former agency heads said they were stunned that the Trump administration would even try to undo the finding and a host of other longtime agency rules. If approved, the rule changes could cause “severe harms” to the environment, public health and the economy, they said.

“This EPA administrator now seems to be doing the bidding of the fossil fuel industry more than complying with the mission of the EPA,'' said McCarthy, who led the agency under President Barack Obama and was a top climate adviser to President Joe Biden.

McCarthy and the other two retired leaders emphasized that environmental protection and economic prosperity are not mutually exclusive, saying strong regulations have enabled both a cleaner environment and a growing economy since the agency's founding 55 years ago.

EPA spokeswoman Molly Vaseliou said President Donald Trump “advanced conservation and environmental stewardship while promoting economic growth for families across the country” in his first term “and will continue to do so this term.”

Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, rolled back more than 100 environmental laws in his first term as president. He campaigned on a promise to “drill, baby, drill” and vowed to ease regulations on fossil fuel companies. In his current term, he has frozen funds for climate programs and other environmental spending, fired scientists working for the National Weather Service and cut federal support for renewable energy.

Reilly said he feared that Zeldin and Trump, influenced by billionaire Elon Musk and his government-cutting agency, would return to a pre-EPA era when industry was free to pollute virtually at will, filling the air in many cities with dangerous smog and rivers with industrial waste.

"I wonder if the malefactors are going to give us more burning rivers,'' Reilly said. The comment was a reference to an infamous 1969 incident in which Cleveland's Cuyahoga River caught fire, spurring passage of the federal Clean Water Act and creation of the EPA a year later during the administration of Republican President Richard Nixon.

The former EPA administrators published an op-ed in the New York Times last month warning of likely environmental harm as the Trump administration imposes funding freezes, cuts spending and fires more than a thousand employees. In a statement Friday, they said the plan to undo environmental rules “sets the country on a course that will cause irreparable harm to Americans, businesses and environmental protection efforts nationwide.”

Regulations are hard to make — intentionally so, McCarthy said. “They're difficult. They take a lot of effort, which is why I think most of us are scratching our heads as to why we'd really want to keep rethinking what has fundamentally been working.”

Zeldin, in announcing the rule changes, said, Trump officials “are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age.''

Among the changes are plans to rewrite a rule restricting air pollution from fossil-fuel fired power plants and a separate measure restricting emissions from cars and trucks. Zeldin and the Republican president incorrectly label the car rule as an electric vehicle “mandate.″

Biden’s Democratic administration had said the power plant rules would reduce pollution and improve public health while supporting the reliable, long-term supply of electricity that America needs. Biden, who made fighting climate change a top priority of his presidency, pledged that half of all new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. will be zero-emission by 2030.

The EPA also will take aim at rules restricting industrial pollution of mercury and other air toxins, soot pollution and a “good neighbor” rule intended to restrict smokestack emissions that burden downwind areas with smog. Zeldin also targeted a clean water law that provides federal protections for rivers, streams and wetlands.

If approved after a lengthy process that includes public comment, the set of actions will eliminate trillions of dollars in regulatory costs and “hidden taxes,” Zeldin said, lowering the cost of living for American families and reducing prices for such essentials such as buying a car, heating your home and operating a business.

Environmentalists have vowed to fight the changes, which one group said would result in “the greatest increase in pollution in decades″ in the U.S.

A sign on the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency is photographed Wednesday, March 12, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

FILE - The Jeffrey Energy Center coal-fired power plant operates near Emmett, Kan., Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

FILE - The CHS oil refinery is silhouetted against the setting sun Sept. 28, 2024, in McPherson, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

FILE - Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., President-elect Donald Trump's pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, appears before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Capitol Hill, Jan. 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

FILE - Oil Spill Commission co-chair William Reilly, speaks at a hearing in Washington, Sept. 27, 2010. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

FILE - Former White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Nov. 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Teresa de Miguel, File)

FILE - Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican Governor of New Jersey, speaks, March 6, 2019, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

A federal judge on Monday questioned whether the Trump administration ignored his orders to turn around planes carrying deportees to El Salvador in possible violation of an decision he'd issued minutes before.

District Judge James E. Boasberg was incredulous over the administration's contentions that his verbal directions did not count, that only his written order needed to be followed, that it couldn't apply to flights outside the U.S. and that they could not answer his questions about the trips due to national security issues.

“That's one heck of a stretch, I think,” Boasberg replied, noting that the administration knew as the planes were departing that he was holding a hearing on whether to briefly halt deportations being made under a rarely used 18th century law invoked by Trump about an hour earlier.

“I’m just asking how you think my equitable powers do not attach to a plane that has departed the U.S., even if it’s in international airspace,” Boasberg added at another point.

Deputy Associate Attorney General Abhishek Kambli contended that only Boasberg’s short written order, issued about 45 minutes after he made the verbal demand, counted. It did not contain any demands to reverse planes, and Kambly added that it was too late to redirect two planes that had left the U.S. by that time.

“These are sensitive, operational tasks of national security,” Kambli said.

The hearing over what Boasberg called the “possible defiance” of his court order marked the latest step in a high-stakes legal fight that began when President Donald Trump invoked the 1798 wartime law to remove immigrants over the weekend. It was also an escalation in the battle over whether the Trump administration is flouting court orders that have blocked some of his aggressive moves in the opening weeks of his second term.

“There’s been a lot of talk about constitutional crisis, people throw that word around. I think we’re getting very close to it,” warned Lee Gelernt of the ACLU, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, during the Monday hearing. After the hearing, Gelernt said the ACLU would ask Boasberg to order all improperly deported people returned to the United States.

Boasberg said he'd record the proceedings and additional demands in writing. “I will memorialize this in a written order since apparently my oral orders don’t seem to carry much weight,” Boasberg said.

On Saturday night, Boasberg ordered the administration not to deport anyone in its custody over the newly-invoked Alien Enemies Act, which has only been used three times before in U.S. history, all during congressionally declared wars. Trump issued a proclamation that the law was newly in effect due to what he claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

Trump's invocation of the act could allow him to deport any noncitizen he says is associated with the gang, without offering proof or even publicly identifying them. The plaintiffs filed their suit on behalf of several Venezuelans in U.S. custody who feared they'd be falsely accused of being Tren de Aragua members and improperly removed from the country.

Told there were planes in the air headed to El Salvador, which has agreed to house deported migrants in a notorious prison, Boasberg said Saturday evening that he and the government needed to move fast. “You shall inform your clients of this immediately, and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” Boasberg told the government's lawyer.

According to the filing, two planes that had taken off from Texas' detention facility when the hearing started more than an hour earlier were in the air at that point, and they apparently continued to El Salvador. A third plane apparently took off after the hearing and Boasberg's written order was formally published at 7:26 p.m. Eastern time. Kambli said that plane held no one deported under the Alien Enemies Act.

El Salvador's President, Nayib Bukele, on Sunday morning tweeted, “Oopsie...too late" above an article referencing Boasberg's order and announced that more than 200 deportees had arrived in his country. The White House communications director, Steven Cheung, reposted Bukele's post with an admiring GIF.

Later Sunday, a widely circulated article in Axios said the administration decided to “defy” the order and quoted anonymous officials who said they concluded it didn't extend to planes outside U.S. airspace. That drew a quick denial from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said in a statement “the administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order.”

Leavitt also stated the administration believed the order was not “lawful” and it was being appealed. The administration argues a federal judge does not have the authority to tell the president whether he can determine the country is being invaded under the act, or how to defend it.

The Department of Justice also filed a statement in the lawsuit saying that some people who were “not in United States territory” at the time of the order had been deported and that, if its appeal was unsuccessful, it wouldn't use Trump's proclamation as grounds for further deportations.

After Boasberg scheduled a hearing Monday and said the government should be prepared to answer questions over its conduct, the Justice Department objected, saying it could not answer in a public forum because it involved “sensitive questions of national security, foreign relations, and coordination with foreign nations.” Boasberg denied the government's request to cancel the hearing, which led the Trump administration to ask that the judge be taken off the case.

Kambli stressed that the government believes it is complying with Boasberg's order. It has said in writing it will not use Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport anyone if Boasberg's order is not overturned on appeal, a pledge Kambli made again verbally in court Monday. "None of this is necessary because we did comply with the court’s written order,” Kambli said.

Boasberg's temporary restraining order is only in effect for up to 14 days as he oversees the litigation over Trump's unprecedented use of the act, which is likely to raise new constitutional issues that can only ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. He had scheduled a hearing Friday for further arguments, but the two organizations that filed the initial lawsuit, the ACLU and Democracy Forward, urged him to force the administration to explain in a declaration under oath what happened.

The government's statements, the plaintiffs wrote, “strongly suggests that the government has chosen to treat this Court’s Order as applying only to individuals still on U.S. soil or on flights that had yet to clear U.S. airspace as of 7:26pm (the time of the written Order).”

“If that is how the government proceeded, it was a blatant violation of the Court’s Order,” they added.

As the courtroom drama built, so did international fallout over the deportations to El Salvador. Venezuela’s government on Monday characterized the transfer of migrants to El Salvador as “kidnappings” that it plans to challenge as “crimes against humanity” before the United Nations and other international organizations. It also accused the Central American nation of profiting off the plights of Venezuelan migrants.

“They are not detaining them, they are kidnapping them and expelling them,” Jorge Rodriguez, President Nicolas Maduro’s chief negotiator with the U.S., told reporters Monday.

Trump's proclamation alleges Tren de Aragua is acting as a “hybrid criminal state” in partnership with Venezuela.

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Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela. Michael Kunzelman in Washington, D.C., and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.

FILE - Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks along the southern border with Mexico, on Aug. 22, 2024, in Sierra Vista, Ariz. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP)

In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, a prison guard transfers deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP)