Changes at the EPA

During his campaign for president in 2016, Donald Trump promised to abolish the EPA “in almost every form” and, indeed, his time in office saw an unprecedented number of proposed rollbacks of environmental regulations and an equally unprecedented relaxation of enforcement during a global pandemic.

Not all of those changes will stick, however, as legal challenges pile up and environmental groups, states and even industry push back against the dismantling of rules like methane emission regulations and fuel efficiency standards.

Over the course of this three-day workshop, journalists heard from current and former EPA officials, state agencies, industry representatives, environmental historians and NGOs as we discussed what those changes look like in several communities, what a second term of the Trump Administration might mean for the agency and how a potential Biden Administration would change its direction.