Disclosure statement: Between 2023-2024, while working at the Rockefeller Institute, Laura Rabinow served as a senior advisor for chemical safety at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, with a focus on issues related to PFAS.
Part 2: Deconstructing… Again?
In the first part of our blog series, we reflected on the rebuilding of environmental protections under President Biden following the first Trump administration. In this second part, as President Trump takes office again, we summarize the new administration’s stated commitments and its anticipated reprisal of efforts to deconstruct federal regulatory systems across a handful of key environmental issue areas.
Environmental science, law, and policy experts have tended to characterize the first Trump administration’s efforts to administer and reinterpret the meaning of environmental protections as unprecedented. Under President Trump’s first administration, the Environmental Protection Agency’s staffing levels decreased, more than 100 environmental regulations were rolled back, and the administration generally worked to shrink the size of public lands. Many experts expect similar actions during the second Trump administration.
The incoming administration has outlined a focus on deregulation, reducing agency staffing and funding, and rolling back key climate and environmental rules and agreements. President Trump’s first administration prioritized economic growth and deregulation. This time his campaign promised and early actions following his second inauguration have reflected a similar agenda.
EPA Funding & Staffing
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) saw its staffing decline during the first Trump administration, both through cuts, voluntary buyout programs, and staff resignations citing low morale. As we noted previously, EPA avoided the most severe budget and staffing cut proposals by the first Trump Administration—which would have reduced the EPA budget by 26 percent, eliminated 50 programs, and brought staffing down to roughly 12,500 employees—and instead saw modest funding increases and staff losses that were substantial but not as great. From 2016 to 2020, the EPA lost 1,462 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff members, leaving it with 14,172 FTE staff. While this followed longer-term trends in staffing reductions (since the Agency’s peak staffing level in 1999), it also represented the agency’s lowest levels since 1989.
The new administration is likely to reshape the EPA workforce, too, along with the broader federal workforce. During his first day in office, Trump announced a federal hiring freeze restricting filling of any vacant positions or the creation of any new positions. Trump has also reprised efforts from his first term to reclassify some federal employee positions. In an Executive Order issued in October 2020, President Trump created a new federal employee classification (called “Schedule F”) that would have allowed the administration to reclassify positions such that they could be hired and fired outside the traditional merit-based system for the federal bureaucracy. President Biden rescinded the EO when he took office in January 2021, but President Trump’s recent actions moved to reinstate it. A new EO issued by Trump in January of 2025 has rolled back portions of Biden’s order and once again moved to reclassify some federal employees as having “policy-influencing” positions (referring to the employee classification now as “Schedule Policy/Career” instead of “Schedule F”). Subsequent guidance from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has directed agencies to identify all potential positions that should be reclassified under this in 90-days (around the end of April and beginning of May). Critics argue that this could lead to increased politicization of the federal workforce.
Joyce Howell, executive vice president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Council 238, the union that represents EPA employees, stated that agency employees are concerned about the incoming Trump administration and how its policies may impact aspects of their work life. The union has been working on legal challenges to fight the implementation of Schedule Policy/Career (formerly Schedule F) and in 2024, the AFGE approved a new four-year contract aimed at protecting the agency’s workforce. In this contract, there is a new appeals process for employees who feel that they were retaliated against for advocating for science or scientific integrity.
Still, both external environmental policy experts and those who have worked with the prior Trump administration generally anticipate staffing and funding cuts to the agency based on efforts during Trump’s first term to do the same and recent statements by those close to the administration. Myron Ebell, who led Trump’s first EPA transition team said that during the first term, he advised President Trump to submit “a major budget cut proposal” and Ebell stated that funding cuts may have more success during this term with Congress having Republican majorities. Mandy Gunasekara, the former EPA chief of staff under the first Trump administration and author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 EPA section, recently stated, “If there are offices currently in operation that don’t meaningfully contribute to agency missions, those need to go.” During the 2024 presidential campaign Trump distanced himself from Project 2025, but since taking office many of his executive orders have mirrored Project 2025 recommendations.
Oil & Gas
President Trump has outlined how increasing domestic production of oil and gas will be a top priority during his second administration. On the campaign trail, he frequently used the mantra, “Drill, Baby, Drill” to express his desire to expand oil and gas production. More specifically, Trump has promised that he will expand oil and gas production by expediting drilling permits on federal land, as directed in his recent executive order related to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), and increasing the sale of offshore drilling leases. Shortly after the 2024 election, President Trump announced he would nominate Lee Zeldin, a former congressman from Long Island, to head the EPA. Zeldin has previously called for the reversal of New York State’s hydraulic fracking ban, supported new natural gas pipelines, and criticized state zero-emission vehicle requirements and congestion pricing for New York City.
In its first days, the second Trump administration lifted the Biden administration’s pause on approving new licenses for exporting liquefied natural gas and implemented a halt on offshore wind lease sales in federal waters. Many also expect that the new Trump administration will try to decrease or eliminate fees related to methane emissions; during his first administration, Trump eliminated a 2016 rule requiring oil and gas companies to monitor and limit methane leaks from wells. The Biden administration finalized rules aimed to drastically reduce methane and other harmful air pollutants including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from the oil and natural gas industry (as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, facilities that violate emission standards have to pay $900 for every metric ton over the limit, increasing to $1,500 a metric ton in 2026). If his previous action is any guide, President Trump is likely to seek to lessen or overturn entirely the Biden policies.
Trump has nominated North Dakota’s Governor Doug Burgum to be secretary of the Department of the Interior and named him to lead a new National Energy Council. In 2021, Burgum set an ambitious goal of making his state carbon neutral by 2030—not by reducing oil and gas production, but by expanding carbon sequestration. North Dakota is the third largest crude oil producer of any state. Burgum’s record shows that he is not opposed to expanding renewable energy sources: under his gubernatorial tenure wind energy production doubled between 2015 and 2023. However, Burgum has also been supportive of expanding the use and development of not only oil and gas but of coal, as well as critical mineral mining.
Additionally, President Trump has already removed the Biden administration’s electric vehicle incentives, as he had said he would during his 2024 campaign. Despite this, experts have predicted that the EV market will continue to grow as related technology develops and costs fall.
Conservation & Public Lands
President Trump’s first administration reduced the size of some public lands and monuments and generally sought to roll back protections limiting their uses, particularly with respect to oil and gas production (discussed further below). In 2017, President Trump diminished the size of Bear Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by more than one million acres. Alongside President Trump’s broader actions to reduce the size of and protections for public lands, however, a salient conservation policy was enacted during his first term, the signing of The Great American Outdoors Act in 2020 with bipartisan support. The Act established the Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund with royalties from oil and gas drilling in federal waters and provided $9.5 billion for national parks and their backlog of maintenance needs, wildlife refuges, campgrounds, American Indian schools, and guaranteed $900 million annually for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The Legacy fund is set to expire this year.
President Trump is expected to try to open and expand the use of more federal lands for oil and gas drilling, including areas in the Gulf of Mexico (which Trump has recently renamed the Gulf of America) and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). ANWR is the nation’s largest wildlife refuge, roughly the size of South Carolina, and the US Bureau of Land Management estimates that the land may contain 4.25 billion to 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Under his first administration, Trump advocated for opening ANWR to drilling, provisions for which were included as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017. President Biden issued an Executive Order in 2021 that halted oil and gas activities in ANWR, but immediately after his second inauguration, President Trump signed a new Executive Order withdrawing Biden’s EO and directing the federal government to prioritize oil and gas development in ANWR.
On the campaign trail and following his inauguration, President Trump has discussed his desire for the US to purchase Greenland. Greenland is a self-governing part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz stated, “This is about the Arctic. You have Russia that is trying to become king … this is about critical minerals, this is about natural resources … it’s oil and gas. It’s our national security. It’s critical minerals.” Although Trump has been outspoken in promoting these goals it is unclear if his administration will be able to achieve them given significant legal and political challenges.
Water
There are a number of clean water and drinking water policies that are likely to receive consideration by the second Trump administration. Some are rules that his first administration already proposed, changed, or proposed changing, and others are policies in new areas.
Among those rules and provisions that Trump may take another look at is the definition of Waters of the United States (or WOTUS) under the Clean Water Act. The first Trump administration instituted a new definition in 2020 that rolled back an earlier 2015 definition, significantly narrowing the scope of which waters would be protected under the Act. This rollback was canceled by the Biden administration, which reverted to a pre-2015 definition while the Supreme Court took up the related Sackett v. EPA case, and then once the Court issued its ruling, the Biden administration finalized a new rule to conform with the Court’s decision. Trump’s nominee for EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, has noted the intention to provide further clarity on WOTUS while “honoring the decision of Sackett and any future laws to come out of Sackett”—implying that further rulemaking may occur.
During the Biden administration, the EPA finalized the first national drinking water standards for six types of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are known to have adverse health effects. The incoming administration has not been outspoken on its position on this issue, and some have seen Zeldin’s record of supporting certain PFAS-related regulations as a potential indication that the drinking water standards may be continued. The drinking water standards are, however, already finalized, and were finalized prior to the window that could make regulations subject to being reconsidered under the Congressional Review Act (CRA)—a tool that the first Trump administration used in concert with Congress to reverse or revise rules. However, other regulations were finalized after that window or have only been proposed and not finalized, leaving their fates less certain. In the first weeks of Trump’s second term, for example, the administration withdrew the EPA’s proposed effluent limits that would have regulated the discharge of six PFAS chemicals. Others have noted, however, that Project 2025 calls for the incoming administration to “revisit” the designation of PFAS as a hazardous substance under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund), despite the fact that this rule was finalized outside the CRA window, causing some environmental and public health advocates concern.
The first Trump administration finalized Lead and Copper Rule Revisions in 2020, as outlined in an earlier report by the Rockefeller Institute. That rule required that “if a water system serving more than 10,000 persons exceeds the action level, the system is required to replace 3 percent of the LSLs [lead service lines that connect homes with a water system] annually based on a two-year rolling average until the action level [a threshold] is not exceeded for four consecutive six-month monitoring periods.” In 2024, the Biden administration then issued a final rule requiring drinking water systems across the country to identify and replace lead service lines within 10 years, beginning in 2027. This rule further required more testing of drinking water and included a lower action level. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided $15 billion for lead service line replacement, in addition to $11.7 billion to supplement the federal Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund for replacements or other drinking water issues, $2.6 billion of which was initially made available by the EPA. New York expects to receive nearly $115 million annually for five years as a result of this funding for LSL replacements. Approximately $6 billion of the nearly $27 billion total has been dispersed as of January 2025, and some have raised concerns that the second Trump administration may pause or slow funding or move to change the timeline for compliance. Indeed, in the last week of January 2025, the Trump administration issued an “across-the-board” funding freeze for all federal loans and grants in order to review them for compliance with recent executive orders. It is, however, unclear which programs and funding will be impacted.
Although currently there is no federal mandate to fluorinate water supplies, and these decisions are made by state and local governments, Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has advocated for eliminating fluoride from public drinking water. President Trump has spoken in favor of this proposal. Fluoride is a mineral that helps strengthen teeth and reduces cavities for both children and adults and has been added to drinking water since the 1950s. Despite the widespread support of dental professionals and other public health officials, Kennedy has characterized fluoride as an industrial waste and cited negative health impacts.
Environmental Justice
As outlined in our first blog in the series, under the Biden administration there was an expansion of environmental justice policies, programs, and funding aimed at serving the needs of historically marginalized and underserved communities. Some observers now anticipate a significant rollback of environmental justice programs under the second Trump administration. On his first day in office, President Trump reportedly ended the Justice40 initiative, which required at least 40 percent of the benefits of certain federal investments to go to disadvantaged communities, and issued an Executive Order terminating diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and accessibility programs. The EO further terminated DEI and environmental justice-related offices and positions.
Paris Climate Agreement
During his first term, Trump announced in 2017 the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, citing concerns over its economic impact on American businesses and workers. The 2015 Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty aimed to mitigate climate change. Biden rejoined the agreement in 2021 as one of his first acts in office, emphasizing the urgency of global collaboration on climate change. While campaigning for the 2024 election, Trump stated he would again withdraw from the agreement. On the first day of his second administration, President Trump initiated the process to remove the United States once again from the Paris Agreement.
Chevron Deference
The US Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo upended the legal precedent known as the Chevron deference (or doctrine), which directed courts to defer to federal agencies’ expertise to make reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes when administering federal laws and rules. The decision in Loper Bright effectively ended that deference to agency expertise. Legal observers and experts have argued that this will result in an increased authority of judges, who typically do not have the same technical expertise as agency professionals, to interpret the meaning of federal law and rules. Proponents of the ruling argue that it will limit federal overreach and preserve the separation of powers, leaving it to Congress to further specify its intent in lawmaking. This ruling applies to all rules and regulations, but advocates, experts, and officials, including Biden’s EPA Administrator Michael Regan, have noted that this ruling may particularly endanger climate and environmental policy.
Conclusion
The transition from the Biden administration to a second Trump presidency signals a drastic shift in the priorities of federal environmental policies. In particular, the anticipated and now emerging environmental agenda of the new administration signals efforts to expand oil and gas production (including on public lands), cut the size of and funding for key agencies such as the EPA, dismantle environmental justice efforts and climate agreements, and to reconsider key environmental regulations and their interpretation in an effort to, as Trump noted in nominating Lee Zeldin to lead the EPA, “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses.” As these policy shifts unfold, it will be critical to monitor their impact on public health, environmental quality, the nation’s ability to address pressing climate challenges, and the role of state governments in addressing resulting regulatory gaps.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Laura Rabinow is deputy director of research at the Rockefeller Institute
Mathilda Scott is policy analyst at the Rockefeller Institute