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A government watchdog is accusing the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of pre-determining the legal basis for itsclimate framework.
In an amicus filing before theNinth Circuit Court of Appeals, Government Accountability and Oversight (GAO), a nonpartisan nonprofit, and Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT), another government accountability watchdog, unearthed communications from inside the EPA in 2009.
Those communications, the GAO argued, show that climate-minded officials treated Obama’sEndangerment Findingas a foregone conclusion and later used it as the foundation for vehicle emission standards, power plant regulations and permitting restrictions.In particular, GAO pointed to communications from Lisa Heinzerling, who served as the climate policy counsel at the EPA at the time.
In a 2009 email, she claimed the right findings would create a legal mandate for regulation.
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Former President Barack Obama during a campaign event on Saturday, Nov.1, 2025.(Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“We expect to be able to issue a proposed finding of endangerment for greenhouse gases within the next 100 days,” Heinzerling wrote on Feb.8.“Within the same document, we expect to find that certain major categories of greenhouse gases — in particular motor vehicles — cause or contribute to air pollution which endangers public health and welfare.”
“An endangerment finding … will triggerregulatory obligationsunder the Clean Air Act,” Heinzerling added.
Her email was sent just two weeks after PresidentBarack Obama’sinauguration.
Michael Chamberlain, the director of Protect the Public’s Trust, said the communications appear to telegraph a pre-determined outcome.
“The records from that time period merely confirm what many had suspected.The Obama administration’s Endangerment Finding was flawed from the start.It is clear that the new EPA appointees entered office determined to enact this massive bureaucratic overreach,” Chamberlain said.
The unearthed communications come as the Trump administration has made moves to end Obama-era energy regulations.
In February, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency would berescinding the 2009 Endangerment Finding.
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EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin attends a meeting with U.S.President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House on March 13, 2025, in Washington, D.C.(Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“[It] has been the source of 16 years of consumer choice restrictions and trillions of dollars in hidden costs for Americans,” Zeldin said in a Februarypress release.
However, the Trump administration’s effort ran intolegal challenges from a handfulof organizations, including the American Public Health Association, the American Lung Association and the Environmental Law &Policy Center.
They argued that Trump is arbitrarily trying tosuspend scientific findings.The matter is currently before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Despite the ongoing debate over the Trump administration’s efforts, the GAO believes the origins of the Endangerment Finding itself should be enough to decide the matter.
In its amicus brief, GAO continued to highlight what it saw as a process inconsistent with deliberative requirements under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
GAO highlighted another memofrom Heinzerling — this time to President Obama.
“We have a political fraught but scientifically and legally straightforward decision ready to go: that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare and that mobile sources contribute to the pollution that is dangerous,” Heinzerling wrote in March 2009.
In a separate memo to the White House, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson urged the president to issue the Endangerment Finding for political reasons.
“If Earth Day passed without a finding, the domestic and foreign criticism would begin immediately and mount steadily.When, eventually, your administration [makes] the finding — something that, I will be so bold to say, is a near-certainty — it would be described as more the result of criticism than of leadership,” Jackson wrote.
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Former President Barack Obama reacts as he leaves 10 Downing Street in central London, on March 18, 2024.(Adrian Dennis/AFP)
The GAO’s filing blasted the phrasing.
onelink.me/xLDS?pid=AppArticleLink&af_web_dp=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.
“There is no evidence that at any time it was an open question whether the Endangerment Finding would be issued,” the GAO wrote.
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