Trump EPA Political Appointees Scrambled to Offer Free Pass to Pollute

(WASHINGTON - September 25, 2025) Trump Administration political appointees with ties to industry orchestrated the process to invite industrial pollution sources to request exemptions from key Clean Air Act standards, according to internal emails obtained by Environmental Defense Fund. These important pollution limits - now being undermined by industry and Trump appointees - protect the public from toxic air pollutants like mercury, arsenic and chromium emitted by coal-fired power plants and from hazardous air pollutants released by chemical manufacturing facilities and other large industrial sources.

"The Trump EPA issued a sweeping invitation to hundreds of large industrial facilities to apply for a pass to pollute, and now we know that senior political appointees at EPA - who in the past worked for industry groups to weaken pollution limits - played a central role in designing the process to collect and facilitate industry requests," said EDF Clean Power Attorney Richard Yates. "People have a right to know why and how their government is allowing facilities to emit more dangerous, toxic chemicals into the air they breathe, and these records show that Trump EPA officials with industry ties are helping polluters call the shots."

In March, EDF filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all records related to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin's offer of exemptions-by-email and then filed suit in April after the agency failed to produce the records or otherwise respond to the FOIA request by the legal deadline. Read more about the lawsuit here.

President Trump has now granted exemptions to more than 160 polluting facilities across the U.S. Nearly two million Americans live near a facility that has received one of these exemptions.

Section 112(i)(4) of the Clean Air Act requires that, in order to grant an exemption from pollution standards, the President must determine that the technology to implement the pollution standard is not available and that an exemption is necessary for national security. The newly released records underscore the Trump EPA's central role in soliciting and facilitating companies' requests for exemptions as well as its hand in the processing of submitted applications.

Key findings from the records include:

• Exemptions process was driven by Trump political appointees with industry ties: The design of the exemption process and website for industry appears to be driven primarily by EPA political appointee Aaron Szabo, Assistant Administrator of the Office of Air and Radiation, formerly a lobbyist for energy clients such as Duke Energy and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association (AFPM), as well as a contributor to the EPA chapter of Project 2025's deregulatory blueprint (see, e.g., pages 63, 203).
• EPA met with industry representatives ahead of exemptions announcement: Talen Energy, the parent company of the Colstrip coal plant in Montana, met with Trump EPA appointee Abigale Tardif multiple times last spring. The Trump administration later granted the Colstrip plant an exemption from standards for mercury and other toxic pollutants.
• Development of the exemptions process was rushed and confused: Several records indicate that EPA career staff did not have information about the exemption process being developed or did not have advance awareness of parts of the announcement (see, e.g., pages 62, 196).

More details are available in this fact sheet.

Following the March 31 deadline for submitting applications, the President announced on April 8 that an undisclosed number of coal plants would be exempted from standards for mercury, arsenic, chromium and other toxic pollutants. On April 14, for the first time and following an EDF FOIA request for public disclosure of the exempted facilities, the list of 68 coal plants exempted from Clean Air Act standards appeared on EPA's website. EDF, alongside 11 other environmental and community groups, brought suit challenging these exemptions in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The President issued several more proclamations in July, exempting numerous additional sources from other industries, including chemical manufacturing, medical equipment sterilization, taconite iron ore processing, as well as three more coal plants.

Note that EDF has redacted, in blue, the names and identifying information of EPA career staffers from the records obtained via FOIA. Civil servants are under unprecedented attack by the Trump Administration.