Dana Taylor

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Last week, the Trump administration announced it was repealing a 2009 determination called the Endangerment Finding.

That finding had been the basis by which the EPA had assumed the right to regulate greenhouse gases for nearly 20 years.

How will its repeal impact Americans and is the Supreme Court likely to join this heated debate?

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt.

I'm Dana Taylor.

Today is Wednesday, February 18th, 2026.

Here to help us unpack some of the legal, political, and scientific issues relating to a warming climate is Michael Girard, one of the foremost environmental lawyers in the country and a law professor at Columbia University, where he's the founder and director of the groundbreaking Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

Thank you so much for coming on, Michael.

Since taking office in January of 2025, Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator under President Donald Trump, has either repealed or significantly weakened dozens of Biden-era environmental regulations.

Can you please tell me about some of the most significant ones and what their impact has been?

As you know, Zeldin has also canceled many of the project grants that the EPA has traditionally funded.

What are some of the biggest ones?

The big news last week was the repeal of the endangerment finding.

Can you briefly give me a little context on what this finding is and how it came to be?

Michael, what's the Trump administration's main legal justification for these changes?

Across the U.S., there's quite a bit of other litigation happening at the state and local level in relation to global warming and climate change.

We spoke with some youth activists in Montana a couple of years ago who sued the Bureau of Land Management and won in order to curtail that state's oil and gas leasing process.

Broadly speaking, Michael, are these cases proving successful in supporting efforts to fight climate change?