Former Staff Warns Project 2025 ‘Will Essentially Destroy EPA’

Implementing Project 2025, a conservative manifesto written by former Trump officials, could have serious public health consequences, former Environmental Protection Agency officials warn.

Air quality protections issued over the past four years are intended to reduce pollution and its health risks, preventing premature deaths and hospital visits for years to come. A group called the Environmental Protection Network (EPN), formed by hundreds of former EPA employees during the exodus of scientists from the agency under the Trump administration, tallied the benefits in a recent report.

But that outcome is not guaranteed. Many policies recently enacted by the Biden administration could be in jeopardy if Donald Trump is reelected and ushers in another period of turmoil at the EPA. Project 2025, led in part by Trump administration alumni, outlines a plan to radically overhaul the agency.

“The 2025 Project is full of recommendations that would essentially destroy the EPA. They would turn it into a shell of its true mission,” says Stan Meiburg, executive director of the Sabin Center for Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest University. Meiburg worked at the EPA for nearly four decades until 2017, when he left his position as acting deputy administrator and now serves on the EPN board.

“From air quality standards to greenhouse gas emissions regulations from cars and power plants, all of these issues were addressed in Project 2025 and the previous version from the Trump administration,” Meiburg says.

Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations in his single term. He appointed fossil fuel insiders to key positions at federal agencies, including the EPA, and tried to slash the EPA’s budget. Amid the turmoil, 550 environmental professionals—one in four—left the agency between 2016 and 2020.

The Biden administration has tried to change course by updating and issuing new rules to limit air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Those rules could have huge public health benefits if they survive the presidential election in November, the EPN report predicts.

The group analyzed the potential impact of 16 major air pollution regulations enacted starting in 2021, estimating they could prevent 200,000 premature deaths and cause 100 million fewer asthma attacks in the U.S. by 2050. Taking into account health care costs, the report estimates annual net benefits of $250 billion by 2050.

“It’s hard to imagine 200,000 people… that’s like a convoy of buses lining the highway from Philadelphia to New York. Think of the families waiting for those people to get off,” says Jeremy Symons, a senior adviser at EPN who co-authored the report and previously served as a climate policy adviser at the EPA before leaving in 2001.

EPN’s estimate is limited to just 16 measures the EPA has taken to clean up the air — a fraction of the agency’s work, given that the EPA is also tasked with preventing land and water pollution. Those policies range from tougher standards for cars, trucks and power plants to curbs on emissions from oil and gas drilling, facilities and manufacturing.

Project 2025, created by the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, takes aim at some of those policies. One example is the EPA’s embattled Good Neighbor Plan, which aims to keep smog-causing pollution from upwind states toward neighbors. Project 2025 says the next president should “review Biden-era regulations to ensure they don’t ‘overpolice’ upwind states.”

The Supreme Court, with three members appointed by Trump, has already dealt the Good Neighbor Plan a blow. In June, SCOTUS granted Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and industry groups a temporary stay of the plan while they challenge the policy’s legal validity in court. A series of SCOTUS decisions since the Trump administration have fueled a conservative deregulatory agenda, making it harder for the EPA to write new rules no matter who is elected president.

Vice President Kamala Harris says she will “take on the climate crisis,” pointing to lawsuits she filed against polluters as California attorney general, even as she has touted record U.S. oil production under Biden’s leadership. She is expected to defend Biden-era environmental policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest clean energy spending package ever passed in the U.S., which Donald Trump has said he will defund. The huge amount of funds the IRA entrusts the EPA to spend or allocate adds to her workload as she continues to recover from the Trump-era brain drain.

Project 2025, meanwhile, is pushing for a “major reorganization” at the EPA that would further reduce staff and eliminate entire departments and programs deemed “duplicative, wasteful, or unnecessary.” The lead author of the EPA chapter is Mandy Gunasekara, who was EPA chief of staff in the Trump administration. She worked under Andrew Wheeler, the former coal lobbyist Trump tapped to lead the agency.

“The authors of the Project 2025 EPA chapter used their years at the EPA under the Trump administration as a reconnaissance mission and testing ground for even more irresponsible plans,” Symons says. “We’ve seen the impact these kinds of plans can have under President Trump. We need to take this seriously when they’re about to essentially take the EPA out of the game and hand the keys to the polluters.”

The Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The EPA did not comment on Project 2025, but spokesman Remmington Belford said in an email that “EPA remains committed to protecting public health and the environment by implementing science-based pollution standards that address climate change and improve air quality for all Americans.”