The implementation of the conservative manifesto of former Trump officials, “Project 2025,” could have serious consequences for public health, warn former Environmental Protection Agency employees.
Air quality measures introduced over the past four years are designed to reduce pollution and related health risks, preventing premature deaths and hospitalizations in the years to come. A group called the Environmental Protection Network (EPN), formed by hundreds of former EPA employees during the exodus of scientists from the agency under the Trump administration, listed the benefits in a recent report.
But that outcome is not guaranteed. Many of the recent actions enacted under the Biden administration could be in jeopardy if Donald Trump is re-elected president, ushering in another period of turmoil at the EPA. Project 2025, led in part by former members of the Trump administration, lays out a plan for a drastic restructuring of the agency.
“They would turn it into a shell of its true mission.”
“Project 2025 is full of recommendations that would essentially gut the EPA. They would turn it into a shell of its true mission,” says Stan Meiburg, executive director of the Sabin Center for Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest University. Meiburg worked for the EPA for nearly four decades until he left his post as deputy director in 2017 and now sits on the EPN board.
“From ambient air [air quality] Standards to regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from cars and power plants – these are all things that were directly implemented in the recommendations of Project 2025 and in the previous version of the Trump administration,” says Meiburg.
Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations during his single term in office. He appointed fossil fuel industry insiders to key positions in federal agencies, including the EPA, and sought to drastically cut the EPA's budget. Amid the turmoil, 550 environmental protection specialists – one in four – left the agency between 2016 and 2020.
The Biden administration has tried to reverse course by updating and enacting new policies to limit air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. Those measures could deliver enormous public health benefits if they survive the presidential election in November, the EPN report predicts.
The group analyzed the potential impacts of 16 major air pollution regulations enacted since 2021 and estimated that they could prevent 200,000 premature deaths and lead to 100 million fewer asthma attacks in the U.S. by 2050. Taking health costs into account, the annual net benefit would be $250 billion by 2050, the report estimates.
“It's hard to imagine 200,000 people … that's the equivalent of a bus convoy stretching along the highway from Philadelphia to New York City. Think of the families waiting for those people to get off,” says Jeremy Symons, a senior adviser at EPN who co-authored the report and previously served as a climate policy adviser at the EPA before retiring in 2001.
EPN's estimates limit the number of actions the EPA has taken to clean air — a fraction of the agency's work, considering the EPA is also tasked with preventing land and water pollution. These actions range from stricter standards for cars and trucks and power plants to limiting emissions from oil and gas wells, appliances and manufacturing.
Project 2025, launched by the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, is targeting some of these policies. One example is the EPA's controversial Good Neighbor Plan, which is designed to prevent smog-forming pollutants from drifting from upwind states to neighboring states. According to Project 2025, the next president should “review Biden-era regulations to ensure they do not 'overpolice' upwind states.”
The Supreme Court, three of whose members were appointed by Trump, has already dealt a blow to the Good Neighbor Plan. In June, the Supreme Court granted Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and industry groups a temporary stay of work while they challenge the legal basis of the policy in court. A series of Supreme Court decisions since the Trump administration have advanced conservatives' deregulation agenda and made it harder for the EPA to craft new regulations, regardless of who is elected president next.
Vice President Kamala Harris says she will “tackle the climate crisis,” pointing to lawsuits she filed against polluters as California's attorney general, even as she touted record U.S. oil production under Biden's leadership. She is expected to defend Biden-era environmental policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest clean energy spending package ever passed in the U.S. and which Donald Trump has said he would strip funding from. The sheer volume of funds the IRA is directing the EPA to spend or disburse adds to her workload at a time when it is still recovering from the Trump-era brain drain.
Project 2025, meanwhile, is pushing for a “comprehensive reorganization” of the EPA that would further reduce the number of full-time positions and eliminate entire departments and any programs deemed “duplicative, wasteful or redundant.” The lead author of the chapter devoted to the EPA is Mandy Gunasekara, who was EPA chief of staff during the Trump administration. She served under Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist whom Trump appointed to lead the agency.
“The authors of the EPA chapter on Project 2025 have used their years of work at the EPA under Trump as a fact-finding mission and training ground for even more reckless plans,” says Symons. “We have already seen the impact of such plans during President Trump's administration. We have to take it seriously if they want to essentially take the EPA out of the game and hand the keys to polluters.”
The Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The EPA did not comment on Project 2025, but spokesman Remmington Belford said in an email, “EPA remains committed to protecting public health and the environment by implementing science-based pollutant standards that address climate change and improve air quality for all Americans.”