Environmental enforcement drops to a new low in Trump administration, data shows Ignacio Calderon, USA TODAYSeptember 30, 2025 at 3:05 AM 0 Environmental enforcement has hit historic lows, as the Trump administration has brought fewer lawsuits against companies for environmental violations in its fi...
- - Environmental enforcement drops to a new low in Trump administration, data shows
Ignacio Calderon, USA TODAYSeptember 30, 2025 at 3:05 AM
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Environmental enforcement has hit historic lows, as the Trump administration has brought fewer lawsuits against companies for environmental violations in its first six months than any other administration in the 21st century, underscoring that the administration has scaled back rules that protect vulnerable communities from pollution.
The administration started 14 lawsuits for environmental violations, the fewest in any six-month stretch this century, beating the previous lows in the Biden administration.
In Trump's first term, his administration filed 42 such lawsuits in the first six months, federal data shows.
The dwindling enforcement tracks budget cuts at the EPA's enforcement department over the years, but some experts say the Trump administration's enforcement approach could mean communities losing protection if polluters are not held accountable.
"We all went through the first Trump administration, and things felt chaotic, but it felt like there was rule of law," said Keene Kelderman, a research manager at the watchdog group Environmental Integrity Project. "It just feels like they don't care this time around."
Enforcement actions by federal agencies, both administrative and judicial, are an important lever that administrations have used to hold companies accountable for polluting the environment, a burden that has usually fallen on low-income communities.
The administrative cases form the bulk of the Environmental Protection Agency's enforcement actions. Those tend to be smaller offenses that are handled without the need for a court. For example, a water treatment facility failing to submit a pollution report.
But for bigger violations, think an oil spill, the EPA will take a company to court, which it calls a judicial action. These lawsuits are filed through the Department of Justice seeking hefty fines, compensation for clean-ups and adding pollution control equipment. In very rare cases, such as when a company knowingly pollutes its surroundings or when its actions are responsible for a death, the DOJ can pursue criminal charges against a company.
The Trump administration's new administrative enforcement cases match past presidencies, but new judicial cases, which carry heavier financial consequences, are at their lowest start this century.
Examples of recent judicial actions came against a facility in Puerto Rico for emitting too much of a carcinogenic gas, Virginia farms dumping debris into wetlands and streams and an aluminum facility in Illinois for violating Clean Air Act standards.
Asked about the declining trend, the EPA defended its enforcement record, downplayed lawsuits as a measure of enforcement and emphasized its administrative and criminal enforcement record this year.
The agency said it has opened more environmental criminal cases in its first six months than the Biden administration. Data on recent criminal cases is not publicly available on the database analyzed by USA TODAY – the most recent criminal cases recorded there date back to 2023. USA TODAY has requested newer data to verify this.
The agency also said in its statement: "This Administration is focused on efficiently resolving violations and achieving compliance as quickly as possible rather than pushing for broad injunctive relief that goes beyond what the law requires and unfairly and unlawfully burdens industry and energy."
Judicial cases have been on a downward trend for more than a decade after reaching their peak in former President Barack Obama's first administration in 2009. In the first six months of his first term, the Obama Administration filed 102 lawsuits.
The decline in every subsequent administration since the first Obama administration came as the EPA's resources dwindled.
During Obama's first term, the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance budget also reached its peak. It's since been slashed by multiple administrations. In fiscal year 2024, it sat about $200 million lower than in 2011, adjusted for inflation, and its staff was cut by over 500 employees, according to data compiled by the Environmental Integrity Project.
Beyond the EPA, the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency's restructuring of the federal government has also diminished the DOJ's environmental enforcement section, which handles these major cases.
Based on the farewell parties he was invited to and other conversations with former colleagues, Tom Mariani, former chief of the DOJ's environmental enforcement section, estimates the number of lawyers in his unit is at 65 to 70, down from the 120 or so it had earlier in 2025.
Mariani said when the EPA sues someone, it's a labor-intensive process to get the evidence to prove a violation. He remembers reading about someone saying, "I keep hearing, 'you need to do more with less,' and maybe you can do that for a while, but sooner or later, you start to do less with less."
Besides these budget and staffing cuts, Larry Starfield, a former principal deputy assistant administrator at the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, said political will is the other big variable in enforcement.
Often minorities and low-income communities tend to be disproportionately exposed to pollution. Environmental justice programs were enacted to address these inequalities.
In March, the EPA set its new enforcement priorities in a memo, making it clear that it won't punish companies on environmental justice grounds, following Trump's executive orders.
"Environmental justice considerations shall no longer inform EPA's enforcement and compliance assurance work," the memo said, explicitly noting that it may no longer consider whether an affected community is overburdened or vulnerable.
"So, if you've got communities that have been suffering for decades from high levels of pollution, enforcers can't look at that. If a community has high cancer rates and poor health care, enforcers can't consider that," Starfield said. "I think it's a very sad overreaction to a perceived problem, and I think it is wrong."
In its email statement, the EPA said environmental justice is "actually discrimination" and said the agency is committed to addressing pollution for all Americans. "The EPA will ensure that enforcement focuses on the worst pollution and harm to human health, wherever it is found," the agency said.
The March memo also limits enforcement that pauses energy production.
"Enforcement and compliance assurance actions shall not shut down any stage of energy production (from exploration to distribution) or power generation absent an imminent and substantial threat to human health," the document says.
Daniel Farber, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said it is not unusual that the administration would align enforcement with its priorities, "but in this case, because the administration's priorities are so heavily tilted against environmental protection, you're just amplifying the problem at the enforcement level."
Farber added that federal action is not the only way environmental laws get enforced.
"There's state government involvement and some private citizen suits, and we don't know to what extent those are really taking up the slack," Farber said.
Beyond shifting enforcement priorities, the EPA has also launched dozens of other deregulatory efforts: proposals to repeal the government's ability to limit greenhouse gas emissions, such as those from cars and power plants and weaken standards around emissions from power plants. USA TODAY previously reported that the agency's cost analysis models estimate that these actions could end up costing Americans more than they could save them.
For his part, Starfield said he hopes the EPA focuses on what it was established to do: protect public health and the environment.
"I would like the mission of the agency to be restored to what its mission had been from Richard Nixon until this year."
Mariani, the former DOJ environmental enforcement chief, said there's a surprising number of people who live near some sort of industrial operation. "If you care about having clean air, clean water and land where we have to dispose of stuff in a safe and secure way, then you should care about this."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Environmental enforcement drops to a new low in Trump administration
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