Reports from separate environmental advocacy groups show that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency enforcement has decreased since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, and one former EPA official is worried about what comes next.
“I feel heartsick for the professional civil servants at the EPA who have dedicated their lives to the fundamental mission of the agency, which is to protect human health and the environment,” said Debra Shore, former regional administrator for EPA Region 5. “Not only have they been treated with willful cruelty by this administration, but they see that ability to fulfill the basic mission being dismissed, derided and eroded.”
On Monday, the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative released their “Making America Polluted Again” report, which was a deep dive into the EPA’s 2025 enforcement records. The report alleges that the 2025 track record “is the worst of any administration in the last 20 years.”
The Environmental Integrity Project, on Thursday, released a similar report titled “Declining Environmental Enforcement in Trump’s Second Term.” The report claims that environmental law enforcement “suffered a dramatic collapse” since Jan. 20, 2025, and civil lawsuits dropped to a historic low.
The EPA responded to the two reports in a Thursday morning statement.
“EPA has concluded more cases in the first year of the Trump administration than the Biden administration had in its last year,” the statement said. “We will be publishing those numbers soon. The Trump EPA remains committed to ensuring environmental laws are followed and keeping Americans safe as we carry out our core mission of providing clean air, land, and water for every American and protecting human health and the environment. Unlike the last administration, we are focused on achieving swift compliance and not just overzealous enforcement intended to cripple industry based on climate zealotry. One erroneous report from a left-wing group funded by dark money does not change the facts.”
Shore believes it’s off-base for EPA officials to politicize report findings, she said.
“They don’t want to own the fact that enforcement is down,” Shore said. “The number of civil judicial cases has reached a historic low. … That’s not a political measure, that’s a fact.”
Shore commends researchers who create reports that look into EPA actions and enforcement, she said. After looking at the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative’s report, Shore believes that the EPA gets a failing grade for its actions in 2025.
“They provide a lot of data to support the conclusion that the agency is failing to fulfill its mission and to deliver what the American people deserve and want, which is the protection of human health and the environment,” Shore said. “What undergirds this report is really that in the Department of Justice, its environmental enforcement section has been hollowed out and decimated.”
According to its website, the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative is an organization that analyzes environmental data and information, and it aims to make it more accessible.
Scout Blum, one of the “Making America Polluted Again” report authors, said researchers specifically looked at enforcement between Jan. 20 and Nov. 30, 2025. The report specifically looked at civil cases that the second Trump administration launched, finding that eight were initiated and about one-third of what the Biden administration initiated in 2024.
The first Trump administration engaged in less enforcement, according to the report, which was exacerbated by effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Blum said that made enforcement more difficult for the Biden administration.
Blum believes whoever follows the Trump administration will struggle to get enforcement back to previous levels.
“It’s not going to look like a good thing to want to work for the federal government if every administration has this shift that we’re seeing,” Blum said. “It’s going to be an immense mountain to climb to even begin to restore some of this because they’ve lost enormous amounts of brain power and experience.”
In addition to civil cases, the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative found that inspection activities “dropped across the board,” including for air pollution, waste, drinking water and toxic substances. According to the report, inspections for the Clean Water Act fell least dramatically, and inspections for the Toxic Substances Control Act, including for lead paint, dropped by more than one-third.
“We were using data from EPA’s own databases,” Blum said. “Part of why we wanted to do this is because we noticed some of the rhetoric from the Trump administration and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin had this enormous emphasis on returning the EPA to its original roots, making sure everyone has clean air, water and land.”
Looking forward to the remainder of Trump’s term, Blum doesn’t see anything that would stop the enforcement trend. She believes it might level out, Blum said, but she’s concerned about a lack of transparency going forward.
“Is the Trump administration not going to be keeping up with this data?” Blum said. “I don’t see them reversing course and all of a sudden starting to enforce this more.”
The Environmental Integrity Project found similar results in its report, which also looked at civil lawsuits filed against polluters. The organization found that filed lawsuits were 76% lower than in Biden’s first year in office.
Lawsuit settlements also declined, according to the Environmental Integrity Project, finding that 40 were settled in 2025. During former President Barack Obama’s second term, 186 lawsuits were settled, 115 were settled in Trump’s first term, and 112 were settled during Biden’s administration, according to the report.
The report claims it’s too early for a comprehensive evaluation of the Trump administration’s efforts, but the EPA is “moving sharply in the wrong direction.”
Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said she expects civil judicial prosecutions will continue to decline through the remainder of the Trump administration.
“What that means is that we’re going to see more communities that are living near these big sources of pollution … continue to be exposed to illegal pollution that’s going to threaten their health,” Duggan said.
Courtney Bernhardt, director of research, said she believes that the EPA will continue to decline in its enforcement and will roll back other rules already in place.
“The decline in numbers that we’re pointing out is an indicator, but you have to view it within kind of a broader context of their end goal,” Bernhardt said. “They’ve changed the focus of the (EPA), which is supposed to be focused on protecting human health and the environment. The administrator and the Trump administration said they want to focus on making industry more competitive, which is a totally different focus, and that’s not what the EPA was designed to do.”
