What Are We Losing with the EPA’s Endangerment Finding—and How Can We Fight Back?

A paper cut-out depicting black power plant smoke stacks is affixed to a light switch. — Photo by Jas Min on Unsplash

In 2009, research on wildfires and severe heatwaves, smoke-related deaths, food insecurity, and increased health problems all tied back to the warming climate. This led the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to issue the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act.

More commonly known as the Endangerment Finding, this part of the Clean Air Act relied on years of research on the increasing risks of climate change and the six greenhouse gases contributing the most to global warming: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. It also built upon the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA that these greenhouse gases must be seen as air pollutants, making them subject to the Clean Air Act.

Many of these gases are emitted by cars and power plants that would, following the Endangerment Finding, be subject to regulated emission standards. While industry groups lobbied against the finding, the Supreme Court would not review an industry lawsuit challenging it.

Roughly 17 years after the Endangerment Finding was issued, in February 2026 the EPA released a new statement finalizing its rescission.

The statement reads in part, “Using the same types of models utilized by the previous administrations and climate change zealots, EPA now finds that even if the U.S. were to eliminate all GHG emissions from all vehicles, there would be no material impact on global climate indicators through 2100.”

The Response from Nonprofits

The research behind this statement on alleged new findings from the EPA remains unclear. The EPA did not respond to NPQ’s request for clarification.

In a more direct response, nearly 20 nonprofits have come together from across different sectors to sue for the reinstatement of the Endangerment Finding, including the American Public Health Association, American Lung Association, Clean Air Council, Friends of the Earth, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Union of Concerned Scientists, represented by Earthjustice; and the Center for Biological Diversity, Environmental Defense Fund, Environmental Law & Policy Center, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), and Sierra Club.

The groups argue that the EPA is ignoring years of established scientific research. The lawsuit also highlights the Supreme Court precedent that emissions endangering public health must be regulated.

Expected to be consolidated with this lawsuit is another filed by 24 states along with a group of cities and counties. As The New York Times reported, this would make for “one of the largest legal challenges to date against the Trump administration’s unraveling of federal climate policy.”

More Erosion of Protections

This is also not the first attempted reversal of environmental protections this year.

This week Congress voted to rescind protections established in 2023 for the Boundary Waters, a wide swath of land and lake that dominates the border between Canada and the United States in Manitoba and Minnesota. Easily accessible, the Boundary Waters make up the largest federally designated wilderness north of the Everglades and east of the Rockies.

That may change, however. On April 17, in an unprecedented use of the Congressional Review Act, the US Senate voted 50–49 on HJ Resolution 140 to overturn the ban on mining near the Boundary Waters Wilderness. This makes the area vulnerable specifically to the Twin Metals project, a copper-nickel mine proposed by the Chilean mining company Antofagasta. The Trump administration has argued that mining the Boundary Waters is a step toward US mineral independence.

Opponents say this would pollute the Boundary Waters, destroying the ecosystem forever and endangering the water reservoir as similar projects have done in other parts of the country. Notably, this mining operation would create the same exposure of sulfide-bearing rocks to air and water that has made mountaintop mining so destructive to land and waterways in Appalachia.

Using the Congressional Review Act to open the Boundary Waters to mining also sets a precedent for removing other public land protections across the nation, a frightening reality that has galvanized environmentalists, hunters and anglers, and tribes.

In an interview with NPQ, Dawn Goodwin of RISE Coalition, an Indigenous-led environmental network in Minnesota, said that the passing of HJ Res 140 will put a “fast track on everything while cutting out the tribal voice and tear to shreds the Clean Water Act.”

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) has already submitted the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, nearly 1.6 million acres of diverse wilderness in Southern Utah, to a similar congressional review.

Attacks on Rural Areas

While the Trump administration has argued that the environmental protections in the Endangerment Finding are hurting the rural poor by keeping them from “affordable vehicle ownership…essential to the American Dream and a primary driver of economic mobility out of poverty in the United States,” advocates point out that the administration’s rescission of the protections amounts to attacks on the health and economy of rural areas.

The Boundary Waters contribute to a recreation economy that generates more than $913 million annually for the state of Minnesota. Similarly, jobs in the Utah counties around the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument grew by over 50 percent once the monument was designated, and the area saw a significant increase in investment.

The move to weaken protections for the popular monument—dubbed “a crown jewel of the nation’s public lands system” by the National Resources Defense Council—has galvanized a variety of groups across party lines, from the Wilderness Society to Earthjustice to the Grand Canyon Trust. Members of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition have also spoken out against any attempt by Congress to overturn protections established in early 2025.

It is this solidarity that gives Goodwin hope in the face of multipronged attacks on established environmental legislation.

“We can come together, that’s what we can do, and together we can fight this,” she said. “Form coalitions, work together. That’s how we win.”