Audit, Compliance and Risk Blog

Since returning to office in January, President Trump and his administration have promulgated many actions to reduce and revamp the US federal government, and additional actions focused on specific agencies. I wrote about general approaches to environmental regulation HERE. In addition, The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been a target of specific directives, and new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has already announced important policy and procedural changes at his agency. The remainder of this note summarizes EPA-specific changes ordered and/or instituted as of the end of February 2025.

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Incoming President Trump and the Republican majorities in Congress have begun sweeping plans to reverse many of the outgoing Biden Administration’s environmental policies. The timing and practicality of these reversals depends very much on each of the targeted activity’s legal form – law, regulation, Executive Order (EO), or guidance document. They also depend on where each particular target is in the governmental process: a non-binding policy, a proposed regulation subject, a final regulation subject to administrative appeals or court attacks, and a final regulation. President Trump has taken early executive action under each of these sets of situations. I will write about some separately, but the remainder of this note summarizes each general type of situation, with examples of each set out in order ranging from quickest/easiest to most time consuming/difficult. 

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