By Meridith McGraw

The Trump administration repealed the Obama-era scientific finding that serves as the legal basis for federal greenhouse-gas regulation, in the most far-reaching rollback of U.S. climate policy to date.

President Trump said at the White House on Thursday that the move was " the single largest deregulatory action in American history." The Wall Street Journal earlier reported Trump was expected to make the move.

The reversal targets the 2009 "endangerment finding," which concluded that six greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. The finding provided the legal underpinning for the Environmental Protection Agency's climate rules, which limited emissions from power plants and tightened fuel-economy standards for vehicles under the Clean Air Act.

Trump's move was expected to remove the regulatory requirements to measure, report, certify and comply with federal greenhouse-gas emission standards for motor vehicles, and repeals associated compliance programs, credit provisions and reporting obligations for industries.

A White House account on X called it "the basis that Radical Left activists used to justify over $1.3T in crushing regulations on American families and businesses." Environmental groups have decried the move and some have said they would challenge a rollback in the courts.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 12, 2026 14:24 ET (19:24 GMT)

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