President Trump's EPA Administrator Unveils Agency's New Priorities

By Karen Davis

Amid uncertainty over future staffing and funding levels, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a new priority list for the agency titled the “Powering the Great American Comeback Initiative.” The strategy, rolled out on Feb. 4, 2025, rests on the following five pillars:?

1. Clean Air, Land, and Water for Every American.
2. Restore American Energy Dominance.
3. Permitting Reform, Cooperative Federalism, and Cross-Agency Partnership.
4. Make the United States the Artificial Intelligence Capital of the World.
5. Protecting and Bringing Back American Auto Jobs.?

The plan outlines the EPA’s priorities under the Trump administration and is in alignment with those expressed in several recent Trump executive orders and presidential actions. Recurring themes include:

• Ensuring taxpayer money is appropriately spent within the agency.
• Streamlining permitting to encourage capital investments that create jobs.
• Unleashing U.S. energy production, in particular projects that are needed to supply energy to data centers to power artificial intelligence.
• Removing “burdensome policies” on the auto industry that do not promote “true consumer choices” for vehicles.?

However, the Administrator’s explanations of two of the five EPA pillars refer to “developing the cleanest energy on the planet” and “powered and operated in a clean manner with American-made energy,” language that seems inconsistent with recent Trump executive orders focused on unleashing the development of fossil fuels rather than renewables such as solar and wind.

Administrator Zeldin also furthered the administration’s goals on Feb. 5, 2025 when the EPA changed the name of its Gulf of Mexico Division to the Gulf of America Division (GAD).

Staffing levels at the EPA remain in flux. On Monday, Feb. 10, 2025, a federal judge in Massachusetts extended the deadline for EPA and other federal employees to decide if they will accept the administration’s “deferred resignation” program for the second time in?a week, until he can make a formal determination on whether to pause?the program indefinitely. See our previous alert for more on the possible impact of the various Trump Administration initiatives on EPA staff.

Future funding is also uncertain. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a directive imposing a temporary pause of federal grants, loans and other financial assistance programs, then rescinded the directive two days later. Following recission of the directive, the White House Press Secretary issued a statement that the freeze was still in effect despite rescission of the OMB directive. According to the temporary restraining order issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, the EPA emailed federal grant recipients the day after the OMB rescinded its directive, stating that the funding could not be disbursed due to the OMB directive and the requirement to align federal spending with “the will of the American people as expressed through President Trump’s priorities.” In addition to the OMB directive, the president’s Unleashing American Energy Executive Order froze funding for projects funded under the Inflation Reduction Act or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. For more on the implications of the funding freeze see our previous blog posts here and here.

The new EPA Administrator has set lofty goals with the five pillars of the Powering the Great American Comeback Initiative. Whether the EPA can achieve these goals while it undergoes potential staffing reductions and funding restrictions remains to be seen.

For information on this and related topics, contact author Karen Davis at [email protected], or another member of the firm's Environmental Practice Group.

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