Internal communications from the Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) show that staffers rushed to publish a landmark climate regulation at a plum time for political messaging and imagining “group hugs” with green groups ahead of the announcement.
The regulation, known as the Endangerment Finding, expanded the definition of harmful air pollutants to include greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide and therefore allows the EPA to regulate them under the Clean Air Act. The Trump EPA proposed a rule to rescind it in July 2025 and is expected to announce the final verdict on Thursday, a decision critics have previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation would be a boon for key industries and consumer choice.
Obama EPA officials were hoping to announce the Endangerment Finding proposal ahead of Earth Day, internally flagging concerns over missing the self-imposed deadline related to “domestic and foreign criticism [that] would begin immediately and mount steadily,” according to a memorandum for Obama attributed to former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, dated March 2009. The proposed Finding was announced on April 17, 2009.
Weeks after former President Barack Obama’s inauguration, on Feb. 16, 2009, an EPA official wrote that “the Sierra Club and other petitioners” who challenged a previous agency memo “will NOT be asking the court to stay the memo tomorrow. So, we should all be celebrating together tomorrow, and the Green Group meeting should be cause for a group hug. Have a good night.”
Though the timeline is unclear, other versions of these EPA documents redacted the sentence, “so, we should all be celebrating together tomorrow, and the Green Group meeting should be cause for a group hug,” and documents obtained by the government watchdog, Protect The Public’s Trust, include the full statement.
“The endangerment finding was an unprecedented power grab. These records provide evidence, if more were needed, that EPA leadership in the very early days of the Obama administration was determined to rush it through to achieve the bureaucratic coup regardless of the data, facts, or traditional process,” Michael Chamberlain, director of the government watchdog, Protect The Public’s Trust, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “They set artificial deadlines, attempted to steamroll procedural niceties, and coordinated with outside activist organizations. The records also reveal attempts by subsequent EPA staff to shield the officials involved by hiding embarrassing information from disclosure that was clearly not eligible for the justifications used to conceal it.”
Mandy Gunasekara, a former EPA chief of staff under the first Trump administration, also told the DCNF that the Endangerment Finding was “more political than scientific.”
“We had good evidence of the politicization and how this was prebaked, prior to them initiating the process, but I don’t know that we had as clear of evidence that we do now,” Gunasekara told the DCNF. “The suggestion that this was some comprehensive scientific analysis is laughable.”
The reason for the “group hug” redaction is currently unclear. However, an EPA spokesperson told the DCNF that “the Obama-era Endangerment Finding was never about sound science, following the law, or protecting human health, it was about fulfilling a radical political agenda.”
“Their rule wasn’t built on gold standard science; it was built on climate alarmism and creative legal fiction with the goal of expanding EPA’s power beyond what Congress intended. Sixteen years later, it’s painfully clear those doomsday predictions didn’t happen. The same flawed models and fear-based assumptions that fueled climate hysteria have failed every real-world test,” the EPA spokesperson continued. “The Trump EPA has since confirmed what common sense always knew. Even if America ended every vehicle emission tomorrow, it would make no measurable difference to the global climate by 2100. The Trump EPA is ending the reign of the climate change religion and putting the American people, not radical activists, back in charge of our energy future.”
The March 2009 memorandum from Jackson notes that “climate change is the most pressing environmental issue of our time, and the ‘endangerment finding’ soon to be issued by EPA will be the United States Government’s first official recognition of this threat. I would urge that this announcement be the major Presidential event of this year’s Earth Week.”
Similar language to the memorandum went on to appear in the April 2009 proposed finding, which stated that “in both magnitude and probability, climate change is an enormous problem. The greenhouse gases that are responsible for it endanger public health and welfare within the meaning of the Clean Air Act.”
The memo continues to note that the Office of Management and Budget will receive a draft finding for interagency review on March 20 and that “OMB has indicated that they will endeavor to complete the process of interagency review in three weeks, so that the endangerment finding would be ready to be issued in mid-April.”
“In fact, the beauty of making the endangerment finding during Earth Week is that it would elate the Left without offering targets of opportunity to the Right. After all, the finding is comprised of nothing more than science and common sense. … I cannot imagine a more appropriate major Presidential event for Earth Week than this one,” the memo continues.
The Obama-era internal communications do reference a December 2007 Endangerment Finding draft, with an EPA official writing on Feb. 22, 2009, that the relevant agency offices were “comfortable with releasing the Dec. 2007 draft endangerment finding … [and asked] What date should we shoot for our own proposed endangerment finding? A number of press outlets have surmised … that the finding will be issued April 2, the Mass v EPA anniversary. You have also saif [sic] the first day of Earth Week would be good.”
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