US president Donald Trump has since his inauguration quickly transformed the USA’s approach to the environment, withholding funds and stretching the limits of presidential power.

In the past few weeks he has fired thousands of employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, the Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the government’s primary climate science agency. The beginnings of some legal opposition lie in the statement by one federal judge, on 27 February, that directives leading to mass firings were illegal.

And in a move that could have far-reaching implications for government efforts to regulate industry, Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the EPA, is reported to have recommended that the agency reverse its 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and welfare. That would eliminate the legal basis for the government’s climate laws, such as limits on pollution from automobiles and power plants.

“We’re talking about undoing 50 years of environmental regulation and accelerating the extinction crisis and risking the health of the American people,” said Ben Jealous, the executive director of the Sierra Club. “There’s so much shocking news every day. People are struggling to process all of it.”

Widespread effects

As described by commentators working for the New York Times, the Trump administration’s moves have unfolded simultaneously across government, affecting federal, state and local agencies and hitting government-funded projects in Africa, Antarctica and around the world. On Inauguration day, Mr Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement.

He has frozen funds appropriated by Congress for clean energy projects, taking particular aim at wind energy, and stopped approvals for wind farms on public land and in federal waters, and has threatened to block projects on private land.

With actions that have ‘stretched the limits of presidential power’, Mr Trump has rolled back regulations aimed at limiting pollution and given a major boost to the fossil fuel industry. And he is abandoning efforts to reduce global warming, even as the world has reached record levels of heat that scientists say is driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels. To achieve such a wholesale overhaul in such a short time, the Trump administration has reneged on federal grants, fired workers en masse and attacked longstanding environmental regulations. He has dismantled programmes aimed at helping polluted communities and scrubbed references to climate change from numerous federal websites.

He has initiated an assault on regulations designed to curb pollution, and at the same time declared an energy emergency, giving himself the authority to fast track the construction of oil and gas projects. The United States is producing more oil than any other nation, and is also the world’s biggest exporter of natural gas. The president has repeatedly mocked climate change, criticised regulations and said that more drilling would bring down energy bills.

Electric vehicles have now lost much of the federal support they gained during the Biden administration. Mr Trump has directed Congress to eliminate federal subsidies for EVs.

Attempts to blunt the Inflation Reduction Act are already delaying projects. The EPA has said it would try to claw back about $20 billion that was awarded to eight organisations under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in low-income communities. The effective dissolution of the United States Agency for International Development has led to the immediate termination of long-running projects in the developing world aimed at helping vulnerable countries adapt to climate change.

Legal implications

In several cases, the administration’s actions have reputedly flouted the law, with agencies defying court orders, freezing funds in legally binding contracts and reinterpreting regulations to suit their aims.

Several of the administration’s actions are already facing legal challenges, but thousands of federal jobs that are eliminated now may be hard to restore. Clean energy projects that were relying on federal funding may not proceed without the expected investments. A sudden stop to scientific work could create gaps in data collection that are impossible to fill. And environmental regulations that are stripped away could be difficult to revive.

After Mr Trump ordered federal agencies to pause billions of dollars in climate and energy grants that were authorised by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, two federal judges ordered the Trump administration to let the money flow again.

In early February, one of those judges, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island federal court, said the White House was defying his order by withholding funds. Some funds have begun moving, but many remain stalled.

John Podesta, a senior climate adviser in the Biden administration, called many of the Trump administration actions illegal. “We followed the law, and they’re breaking the law,” Mr. Podesta said. “It remains to be seen whether they’ll be allowed to get away with it.”