On March 12, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced sweeping measures to undo environmental protections and radically reshape the agency’s mission in what he called the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history.” The announcement elicited widespread praise from Fox News network.

They claimed widespread deregulation will save Americans money on energy and appliances, and praised Trump for following through on promises made during his campaign, namely his pledge to get rid of “the green new scam” and “unleash American energy” by making it easier than ever for energy companies to “drill, baby, drill” while circumventing measures that ensure profits don’t come before the health and safety of Americans.  

• In a March 12 video, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced “31 historic actions in the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history.” Zeldin said these actions are “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” As the New York Times points out, “nowhere in the video did he refer to protecting the environment or public health, twin tenets that have guided the agency since its founding in 1970.” According to Zeldin, the agency’s new mission is to fulfill “President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower cost of living for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to states to make their own decisions.” [EPA.gov, 3/12/25; The New York Times, 3/13/25]
   
• Zeldin appeared on several Fox programs, including Mornings with Maria and The Ingraham Angle to tout the agency’s new agenda. On Mornings with Maria, Zeldin claimed that the deregulation would mean that “it’s going to be easier to purchase a car. It is going to be easier to heat your home, operating a small business is going to be easier. People who are looking for employment are going to have more opportunities.” He also said, when asked about the impact of rollbacks, that “not only can we protect the environment without suffocating the economy, we have to.” On The Ingraham Angle, he said, “The death of the green new scam is upon us.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 3/13/25; Fox News,The Ingraham Angle, 3/12/25; Politico, 5/11/23]
   
• Zeldin’s EPA is moving to delegitimize the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act by challenging the science that determined they are dangerous. This legal framework, often called “the endangerment finding,” was established by a 2007 Supreme Court case and 2009 legal decision, which gave the EPA the authority to regulate six different greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act because they are dangerous to human health. According to The New York Times, revoking this ability “would not just end climate regulations, but would also make sure no future administration could ever curb dangerous emissions from fossil fuels.” [Whitehouse.gov, 1/20/25; The New York Times, 1/21/25]
   
• The EPA wants to scrap regulations that ordered companies to track and cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, as well as initiatives to assess how emissions impact society. Zeldin announced that the EPA will “reconsider” a rule that set tighter new pollution limits for individual fossil fuel power plants, and that the EPA would move to stop asking energy companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions and make those reports open to the public. [EPA.gov, 3/12/25; Politico, 5/11/23; International Energy Agency, 12/16/22]
   
• The EPA will allow corporations to pollute more, dismissing standards that were put in place to maintain cleaner water and air. Zeldin wants to loosen wastewater regulations for coal and other steam-powered power plants, and relax limits to the amount of mercury and other toxic metals power plants can emit. Zeldin claims these regulations “improperly targeted coal-fired power plants,” even though coal plants emit “the vast majority of mercury and other toxic air pollution.” The EPA also wants to make it easier for manufacturing to release more particulate matter, or soot, which research has shown can enter a person’s lungs and go into their bloodstream. [Evergreen Action, 4/11/23; Associated Press, 3/12/25; EPA.gov, 3/12/25]
   
• The EPA is eliminating all environmental justice initiatives, all but ensuring that underserved populations will continue to suffer disproportionately from pollution and climate impacts. The Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights is set to shut down, leaving under-resourced grassroots environmental justice groups to take over these efforts. In recent weeks, Zeldin also canceled nearly $2 billion in environmental justice grants, and the EPA recently shut down EJScreen, a tool that “mapped socioeconomic, climate and health data to show specific areas face disproportionally higher environmental burdens related to climate, poverty, and pollution.” [Media Matters, 2/28/25; Utility Dive, 3/13/25; EPA.gov, 3/12/25]
   
• During his first term, Trump’s EPA aggressively rolled back environmental regulations. In total, his first administration rolled back nearly 100 environmental rules. According to The New York Times, the bulk of those rollbacks were carried out by the EPA. The agency “weakened Obama-era limits on planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and from cars and trucks; removed protections from more than half the nation’s wetlands, and withdrew the legal justification for restricting mercury.” However, in his last term, Trump’s EPA did not reverse the endangerment finding. [Politico, 2/12/25; The New York Times, 1/20/21]
   
• Eliminating these initiatives will strip Americans of the many socioeconomic benefits they provide. A March analysis from The Guardian found that the targeted rules “were set to save the lives of nearly 200,000 people in the years ahead,” based on a 2024 report from the Environmental Protection Network that assessed the public health benefits of various EPA regulations. Separately, the EPA estimated that a set of rules targeting pollution from power plants implemented by the Biden administration in April 2024 (which Zeldin has dubbed “The Clean Power Plan 2.0”) would “prevent nearly 1.4 billion metric tons of planet-warming pollution from entering the atmosphere through the year 2047 – equivalent to taking 330 million gas cars off the road for a year.” The American Lung Association praised Biden’s standards for tailpipe pollution from cars, pointing to its report that found that a “transition to zero-emission transportation” would “result in up to 110,000 fewer deaths and $1.2 trillion in public health benefits across the United States by 2050.” [CNN, 5/1/24; American Lung Association, 3/20/24; The Guardian 3/19/25] 

• Fox News weaved its obsession with the “freedom to choose” household appliances into its coverage of the rollbacks, even though none of the rollbacks directly addressed directives to boost the use of more energy-efficient products. The network has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the Biden administration would force Americans with gas stoves in their homes to stop using them, that New York City would ban coal-fired pizza ovens, and Americans would be forced to use ineffective dish washers. In reality, energy-efficient appliances have been demonstrated to work as well as or even better than older models and save consumers money. Biden’s directives encouraging manufacturers to create more energy-efficient products and move away from gas would have impacted only newly-produced appliances. These actions are undertaken by the Department of Energy, which is mandated by Congress to review each appliance standard every six years. [Media Matters, 5/26/23, 1/12/23; Twitter/X, 1/10/23; The Hill, 1/6/25]
   
• When asked whether Trump inherited a strong economy that may now be facing a recession, Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox Business that the administration “saved the American people $180 billion this week alone” and referenced the EPA slashing “31 burdensome regulations that were on the books from the previous administration.” The figure, which also appeared in a March 6 White House memo, appears to refer to the rollback of Biden’s plan for “reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in passenger cars and light trucks for model years 2023 and beyond." Although it’s not entirely clear how the administration arrived at that figure, one possibility is that it was taken from a December 2021 EPA analysis that offered an estimate for the cost of the light-duty vehicle standard at $180 billion. According to the EPA, the rule would “provide nearly $100 billion of annual net benefits to society.” [Fox Business, Varney & Co, 3/14/25; Whitehouse.gov, 3/6/25; nepis.epa.gov, 12/2021; epa.gov, 3/20/24]
   
• Fox hosts Ainsley Earhardt and Lawrence Jones both attacked Biden’s environmental track record on oil and gas regulations, the auto industry, and energy efficiency standards for appliances. Earhardt said that people employed in fracking previously told Fox News, “We need deregulation, we are so overregulated.” She also claimed that tailpipe regulations and fuel-efficiency standards were “designed to shut down the auto industry.” Jones falsely claimed that with the previous standards, “you’d have to use the dishwasher over and over again, you can’t get your clothes dry.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 3/13/25]
   
• Steve Doocy praised Trump's actions and said, “Just keep in mind these are all things that when Donald Trump was running, said, ‘When I am president I’m going to do this.’” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 3/13/25]
   
• On Fox Business, Stuart Varney celebrated the fact that the EPA is no longer “about combatting climate change” and claimed that the EPA is “now about opening up, creating wealth instead of destroying it.” [Fox Business, Varney & Co., 3/13/25]
   
• In an interview with Varney, Katie Pavlich praised the changes because the EPA would no longer be able to go “so beyond its basic mission of clean air and water” and “control the lives of Americans and every aspect of what they do.” She praised Trump and said he has “always maintained he wants people to have a choice and so he's taking back all of these regulations through the EPA that really impacts people's lives.” [Fox Business, Varney & Co., 3/13/25]
   
• On Fox Business, panelists said that the rollbacks would make everything cheaper and that there is no need for “new laws.” Contributor Brian Brenberg said that deregulation is going to “make your power cheaper, it’s going to make your transportation cheaper, it’s going to make your food cheaper. These are all inflation-fighting moves happening in the EPA and the Trump administration is not going to get any credit for it in the financial press, but it’s helping.” Taylor Riggs argued that deregulation is “better for the economy than a tax cut,” because “I don't need new bills and new laws, I need fewer bills, fewer laws. Cut it down.” [Fox Business, The Big Money Show, 3/13/25]
   
• On The Faulkner Focus, right-wing Seattle radio host Jason Rantz told Faulkner that because of the EPA deregulations, we'll “have cheaper cost of living. I mean, the only thing that we've really gotten out of the green new deal or any policy that might have been inspired by it is just everything is more expensive.” Regarding the EPA throwing out fuel economy standard regulations, he said, “The only thing that does make sense is to roll a lot of this back,” called electric vehicles “an abject nightmare” and said that Americans need “other technologies overall that we can use in our households that do make a difference for the environment but also won't bankrupt us.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 3/13/25]
   
• On Special Report, John Roberts asked if the EPA deregulation means “we get to keep our gas stoves” and Fox Business correspondent Grady Trimble replied, “For now it sounds like it. For the next four years.”  [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 3/12/25]