The Quiet Way Trump Has Made Life Easier for Polluters

It’s not just about environmental rollbacks: Trump and Lee Zeldin have presided over a striking decline in the EPA enforcing existing laws.

While attention has focused on Trump’s most splashy, explicit environmental policies—for instance, the administration’s proud evisceration of environmental protections such as auto fuel standards, oil drilling limits, and the “endangerment finding” underlying emissions regulations—a recent report shows the administration is also overhauling environmental policy in a quieter way: The Environmental Protection Agency is radically reducing enforcement of many environmental laws still on the books. Trump’s EPA, the report reveals, is overseeing a “historic” decline in enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws.

According to the report, which was released by the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, or EDGI, last month, the EPA’s enforcement and compliance database, known as ECHO, shows major declines in enforcement, posing threats to the environment and public health.

Compared with the final year under President Biden, the first year of Trump 2.0 produced a 40 percent plunge in lead paint hazard inspections, a 36 percent decline in toxic substances inspections, a 29 percent drop in average federal penalties for complaints filed, and a 29 percent increase in cases involving zero penalty for violators.

These are not mere bureaucratic slippages, the report makes clear: Among some of the EPA’s “most important enforcement responsibilities”—such as inspections of hazardous waste, toxic substances, and air pollution—Trump’s EPA enforcement “is the worst of any administration in the last 20 years.”