Outlook 2025

OUTLOOK 2025

Trump’s ambitious deregulatory agenda faces legal, political challenges

Inside EPA's Outlook 2025 is our exclusive special report about what’s ahead for EPA as President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress prepare ambitious rollbacks of Biden administration rules and attempt to scale back EPA’s resources and legal authorities. Republicans’ ability to implement a sweeping deregulatory agenda faces legal and other hurdles, including slim House and Senate majorities that will make it difficult to enact some controversial measures, such as those aimed at easing longstanding environmental review requirements for federal actions. Federal courts, newly charged with deciding the “best” legal interpretations, might not give the new administration much leeway. And environmentalists are also stressing strong public support for EPA’s work, in an attempt to blunt major attacks. As in prior years, this report focuses on the legislation, litigation and rulemaking efforts in the coming year on major air, climate, toxics, water, waste, and other policies.

Trump’s DOGE Likely To Face Major Hurdles Slashing EPA Budget, Rules

The incoming Trump administration and its advisory Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are claiming a broad mandate to pursue drastic budget cuts and deregulation at EPA and other agencies through sweeping use of executive power -- though major legal and political challenges appear all but certain to complicate those plans. “I’m excited about this project,” Christopher Walker, a professor at the University of Michigan law school, told a Dec. 19 Federalist Society webinar on DOGE. But, he warned, “in practice...

GOP Hill Control Threatens Biden Climate Efforts, Though Extent Unclear

Republican control of the new Congress is poised to open paths for rolling back numerous Biden-era climate change and environment initiatives, amid Republican pledges to “repeal” the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and calls by Trump-aligned conservative groups to slash EPA’s budget. Among the most immediate candidates for Capitol Hill action are attempts to reverse a subset of relatively recent EPA regulations under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), with potential targets including EPA’s implementation rule for the IRA’s methane emissions...

Courts Wrestle With EPA Deference Amid Trump Bid For Rule Rollbacks

Federal courts are grappling with how to apply the Supreme Court’s landmark Loper Bright ruling that overturned the longstanding Chevron deference doctrine, raising doubts on how effective the ruling will be in aiding President-elect Donald Trump’s planned rollbacks of EPA and other agency rules. At issue is the high court’s 6-3 ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo overturning the Chevron doctrine, which granted deference to federal agencies’ reasonable interpretation of ambiguous statutory language. Elon Musk...

Trump’s Second Term Expected To Bring Multiple Assaults On NEPA

The imminent second term of President-elect Donald Trump is expected to bring multiple attempts to weaken the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the bedrock “look before you leap” law requiring federal agencies to assess, disclose and potentially mitigate negative environmental impacts of major actions such as infrastructure approvals. Attacks on the law include widespread expectations that Trump officials will seek to streamline individual NEPA reviews and policies, as well as several pending lawsuits that could lead to court decisions limiting...

Congress Eyes Another Push For Targeted PFAS Superfund Liability Relief

Congress is expected to renew its efforts to provide Superfund liability relief to water utilities, landfills, airports and other passive receivers of PFAS contamination as a key GOP senator and passive receivers champion targeted legislation providing such relief in an effort to overcome a logjam that halted a broader, bipartisan PFAS bill in the 118th Congress. Environmentalists though plan to oppose any measure to carve out such parties from liability for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) under the Comprehensive Environmental...

Blitz Of TSCA Actions Leaves Trump EPA With Long List Of Mandatory Duties

The Biden EPA has used its closing months to launch a series of TSCA actions that carry statutory deadlines for further action such as completing chemical risk evaluations and rulemakings -- potentially forcing the second Trump administration to juggle scant resources between that work and its planned rollbacks of completed rules and reviews. Just a month before the Jan. 20 inauguration, EPA designated five chemicals as “high priority” for risk evaluation under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), triggering the...

Trump Officials Expected To Advance CCUS, Despite Climate Policy Shift

Though President-elect Donald Trump and the GOP Congress plan to reverse numerous Biden-era climate policies, administration officials are expected to maintain support for carbon capture technology, with supporters now jockeying to highlight non-climate benefits from such efforts. “We’re likely to see continued bipartisan support” for some climate-friendly technologies -- including carbon capture, alongside geothermal, nuclear, and hydropower, Conrad Schneider, senior U.S. director at the Clean Air Task Force, during a Dec. 18 press call. His group supports carbon management, an...

Trump EPA Faces Complicated Task Rolling Back Landmark SDWA Rules

Attempts by the incoming Trump administration to roll back the Biden EPA’s landmark Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) rules on lead and PFAS will meet major statutory hurdles -- in particular SDWA’s untested “anti-backsliding” provision -- even as those rules are expected to face judicial, congressional and executive threats in 2025. The anti-backsliding provision has “never been tested, so we’ll see how a court would handle” the issue, Erik Olson, senior strategic director for health and environmental health at the...

Good Neighbor Plan Impasse Leaves Unresolved Interstate Air Questions

The Biden EPA’s frustrations in trying to regulate interstate air pollution via its stayed Good Neighbor Plan (GNP) portend a challenging future for the agency and “downwind” states in meeting federal air quality standards and fulfilling the Clean Air Act’s interstate air provisions, requirements that remain despite the GNP’s problems, sources say. The GNP remains stayed nationwide by EPA after the agency determined that the Supreme Court’s June decision freezing the rule in much of the country was too difficult...

Landmark MDL Will Test Scope Of PFAS Product Liability Amid Challenges

Landmark litigation over PFAS contamination from firefighting foam will soon begin testing the potential scope of liability for the chemicals’ manufacturers, which could drive additional class action settlements instead of risking the companies’ bankruptcies even as existing settlements have stigmatized the use of PFAS, attorneys say. In multidistrict litigation (MDL) over per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) contamination from aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF), parties are developing a plan for focused discovery on the extent to which the contamination can be tied...

States Expected To Seek CCR Permit Authority Amid Questions On EPA Rules

More states are expected to seek authority to operate their own coal combustion residuals (CCR) permitting programs in the coming years, given the lack of a federal permitting program and doubts about how strongly the incoming Trump administration will defend the Biden EPA’s final rule governing legacy sites and enforce other mandates. But environmentalists are warning they plan to closely track state programs to ensure they comply with federal requirements. “We have a number of states that have indicated an...

States Slated To Follow California’s ‘Indirect Source Rules’ To Counter Trump

Industry attorneys expect other states, including Colorado, New Jersey and New York, to follow California’s lead and advance novel “indirect source rules” (ISRs) to reduce mobile source pollution from different types of industrial facilities, to counter President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to scale back federal regulations. “We do reasonably expect to see an increase in ISR regulations in various markets around the country,” Marc Blubaugh, a partner with Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff, tells Inside EPA . “If anything, we expect...

Environmentalists Push State ELG Efforts As EPA Faces Likely Budget Cuts

Environmentalists are highlighting ways that state environmental agencies can step in where EPA has not set Clean Water Act (CWA) effluent limitations and seek to regulate discharges from chemical, plastics and other industrial sectors given likely budget cuts the agency is facing from the incoming Republican Congress and President-elect Donald Trump. In the face of what are likely to be significant rollbacks from the incoming Trump administration, “we’re really going to try to make an effort to message what states,...

Trump EPA Faces Long List Of Options For Likely TSCA Rollbacks

The Biden EPA’s rush of TSCA rules and chemical evaluations in 2024 leaves the Trump administration with a host of potential rollback targets that range from chemical-specific actions to overarching frameworks for implementing the law -- though which will emerge as top priorities, and what tools officials will use to revise them, remain open questions. While trade groups and Republicans have opposed most of the Biden-era Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) agenda, EPA could struggle to find the resources needed...

Biden, State Policies Spurring EVs Face Barrage Of Trump, Hill Attacks

EPA’s recent approval of a waiver for California’s clean car rules is just one of many policies seeking to curb vehicle emissions and encourage electrification that the incoming Trump administration will target as the president elect and his GOP allies promise to roll back emissions rules and consumer and infrastructure supports for electric vehicles (EVs). A major wildcard hovering over some of these efforts is the conservative Supreme Court. EPA’s foes are hoping it will allow Trump to attack Biden...

Environmentalists Stress Support For EPA Ahead Of Trump, GOP Assault

Environmentalists are gearing up to preserve and defend EPA ahead of the second Trump administration, stressing the strong support from Republicans and other voters that the agency enjoys as the president elect and his allies prepare to launch a new and potentially stronger push to gut the agency, cut its budget and halt key enforcement work. Post-election polling showing significant support for EPA and its budget indicate “there just isn’t the stomach for those kinds of assaults,” Jeremy Symons, a...

Manufacturers Grappling With Implementation Of State PFAS Prohibitions

Manufacturers are grappling with how to comply with several state prohibitions on consumer products with intentionally added PFAS that went into effect Jan. 1, raising concerns about the difficulty they may face implementing future bans owing to gaps in state regulations and a lack of consideration for manufacturers’ production operations. “When it comes to chemicals management generally, there’s going to be all kinds of nuances that need to be figured out, and this broad-based approach and this fast timeline and...

Trump Administration Faces Tough Choices Over RFS, Biofuels Policy

The Trump administration will face tough choices over how to handle the renewable fuel standard (RFS) and biofuels policy more broadly when it takes office Jan. 20, as officials must navigate a familiar tug of war between pro-biofuels and pro-oil interests that divides the Republican caucus and poses a thicket of legal and policy questions. Urgent issues that will need the new administration’s attention include RFS biofuel blending requirements for 2026 and beyond, whether to grant RFS compliance waivers to...

Advocates Flag Global, State Climate Finance Efforts Amid Federal Pullback

Even as incoming Trump officials are expected to stall federal efforts to assess and guard against climate-related risks to the financial system, supporters of such measures say state and international policies will still ensure many large companies such as insurance firms and banks will take some action on the issue. Policy in the next four years will contrast with the Biden administration’s first-ever federal push to address climate-related financial risk. A May 2021 climate finance executive order spurred numerous policies...

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