Enforcement against polluters in the United States plunged in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, a far bigger drop than in the same period of his first term, according to a new report from a watchdog group.
By analyzing a range of federal court and administrative data, the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project found that civil lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in cases
referred by the Environmental Protection Agency dropped to just 16 in the first 12 months after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. That is 76 percent less than in the first year of the Biden administration.
Trump’s first administration filed 86 such cases in its first year, which was in turn a drop from the Obama administration’s 127 four years earlier.
“Our nation’s landmark environmental laws are meaningless when EPA does not enforce the rules,” Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said in a statement.
The findings echo two recent analyses from the nonprofits Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and Earthjustice, which both documented dwindling environmental enforcement under Trump.
From day one of Trump’s second term, the administration has pursued an aggressive deregulatory agenda, scaling back regulations and health safeguards across the federal government that protect water, air and other parts of the environment. This push to streamline industry activities has been particularly favorable for fossil fuel companies. Trump declared an “energy emergency” immediately after his inauguration.
At the EPA, Administrator Lee Zeldin launched in March what the administration called the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history”: 31 separate efforts to roll back restrictions on air and water pollution; to hand over more authority to states, some of which have a long history of supporting lax enforcement; and to relinquish EPA’s mandate to act on climate change under the Clean Air Act.
The new report suggests the agency is also relaxing enforcement of existing law. Neither the White House nor the EPA responded to a request for comment.
A “Compliance First” Approach
Part of the decline in lawsuits against polluters could be due to the lack of staff to carry them out, experts say. According to an analysis from E&E News, at least a third of lawyers in the Justice Department’s environment division have left in the past year. Meanwhile, the EPA laid off hundreds of employees in 2025 who monitored pollution that could hurt human health.
Top agency officials are also directing staff to issue fewer violation notices and reduce other enforcement actions. In December, the EPA formalized a new “compliance first” enforcement policy that stresses working with suspected violators to correct problems before launching any formal action that could lead to fines or mandatory correction measures.
“Formal enforcement … is appropriate only when compliance assurance or informal enforcement is inapplicable or insufficient to achieve rapid compliance,” wrote Craig Pritzlaff, who is now a principal deputy assistant EPA administrator,