The Latest: Trump’s EPA revokes scientific finding that underpinned US fight against climate change

The Trump administration on Thursday revoked a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, the most aggressive move by the president to roll back climate regulations.

The rule finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency rescinds a 2009 government declaration known as the endangerment finding that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

The endangerment finding by the Obama administration is the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet.

Legal challenges are certain for an action that repeals all greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks, and could unleash a broader undoing of climate regulations on stationary sources such as power plants and oil and gas facilities, experts say. Overturning the finding will “raise more havoc” than other actions by the Trump administration to roll back environmental rules, said Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at the UCLA School of Law.

Here's the latest:

A new video from the CIA aims to recruit new spies in China.

The clip, released on YouTube and other sites Thursday, tells a Hollywood-style story of a fictitious Chinese army officer who contacts the CIA after becoming frustrated by corruption within China’s military.

A similar video last year targeted political operatives in Beijing. Like it, the new video links to information about contacting the CIA securely.

A spokesperson for China’s U.S. embassy condemned what it called the agency’s “blatant political provocation.” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement that his agency will continue its efforts to recruit informants from within China’s government and military ranks.

The Trump administration expects at least 20 delegations to attend the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace next week and pledge several billions of dollars for reconstruction of the war-devastated Gaza Strip along with thousands of troops for an international stabilization force that is to secure the territory.

That’s according to two U.S. officials familiar with the planning for the Feb. 19 event to be held at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, now known as the Donald J. Trump U.S. Institute of Peace.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the contributions and troop commitments have yet to be finalized.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu departed Washington on Thursday following a White House meeting, his office said Netanyahu would not be traveling back to the U.S. next week.

Trump repeated multiple false claims about windmills that he brings up regularly.

For example, he alleged that wind energy is “the most expensive energy you can get.” But onshore wind energy is one of the cheapest sources of electricity generation.

Trump also claimed that windmills are “killing the birds.” Wind turbines, like all infrastructure, can pose a risk to birds. However, the National Audubon Society, which is dedicated to the conservation of birds, thinks developers can manage these risks and that climate change is a greater threat.

“No, I wasn’t aware of it,” Trump told reporters when asked whether he was aware of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s trip to Jeffrey Epstein’s island.

Lutnick earlier this week acknowledged in Congressional testimony that he had met with the disgraced financier twice after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a child, reversing Lutnick’s previous claim that he had cut ties with him after 2005. The commerce secretary told senators Tuesday that he and his family had lunch with Epstein on his private island in 2012 and he had another hour-long engagement at Epstein’s home in 2011.

“From what I hear, he was there with his wife and children,” Trump told reporters at the White House, adding ”some people were, I wasn’t. I was never there.”

“I guess over the next month, something like that,” Trump said to a question about his timeline for a striking a deal with Iran on its nuclear program. “It should happen quickly. They should agree very quickly.”

Trump also warned Iran that failure to reach a deal with his administration would be “very traumatic.”

Trump held lengthy talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday and said he’d insisted to the prime minister that negotiations with Iran needed to continue.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, is lobbying the administration to press Tehran to scale back its ballistic missile program and end its support for militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah as part of any deal.

The president, who came under heavy criticism last week after he posted a racist video of Barack and Michelle Obama on his social media account, says the staffer who was allegedly involved in the incident has not been dismissed.

The White House initially defended the offensive video, which depicted the Obamas as primates in a jungle. But after many, including Republican lawmakers, demanded that it be removed, the White House blamed a staffer for posting the video erroneously.

Trump said Thursday that the staffer in question was not fired and again attempted to explain away the video, which he said was part of an online video that was primarily about voter fraud and was a riff on the 1994 movie “The Lion King.”

The movie is set on the savannah, not in the jungle, and it does not include great apes.

As the Israeli leader heads home after meeting with Trump in Washington to discuss Iran and Gaza, his office said he would not be travelling back to the US next week. This means that Netanyahu will be skipping the first meetings of Trump’s Board of Peace, the initiative that was initially framed to oversee future steps of the U.S.-brokered Gaza ceasefire plan but has expanded with Trump’s ambitions of resolving other global crises.

Netanyahu accepted Trump’s invitation to join the board, but has also voiced criticism of Qatari and Turkish involvement in another of Trump’s committees tasked with overseeing Gaza.

He was initially expected to be in the US next week for an AIPAC conference, but the statement from his office said he would instead be addressing the conference virtually.

Asked by a reporter if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bears any responsibility for the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that plunged his country into war, Trump pivoted to criticism of Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Netanyahu has asked Herzog to grant him a pardon from corruption charges, which the president’s office has called an “extraordinary request.”

Trump on Thursday said Herzog “should be ashamed of himself,” surmising that “he doesn’t want to do it because I guess he loses his power” and that “the people of Israel should really shame him.”

Trump went on to call Netanyahu, with whom he met at the White House this week, “a great wartime prime minister.”

Zeldin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy have moved to drastically scale back limits on tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks. Rules imposed under Democratic President Joe Biden were intended to encourage U.S. automakers to build and sell more electric vehicles. The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

The Trump administration announced a proposal in December to weaken vehicle mileage rules for the auto industry, loosening regulatory pressure on automakers to control pollution from gasoline-powered cars and trucks. The EPA said its two-year delay to a Biden-era rule on greenhouse gas emissions by cars and light trucks will give the agency time to develop a plan that better reflects the reality of slower EV sales, while promoting consumer choice and lowering prices.

The mileage plan would significantly reduce requirements that set rules on how far new vehicles need to travel on a gallon of gasoline.

One of the country’s most prominent pollsters, Gallup, has stopped measuring presidential job approval.

It’s not a metric that was unique to Gallup -- AP-NORC tracks presidential approval, as do many other polling firms -- but they had been asking the question for almost a century, starting with approval of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938. The consistency of their trend was essential for making comparisons between presidencies and understanding long-term patterns.

Gallup says it will no longer publish approval or favorability ratings of individual political figures because it’s not a place where Gallup can make a distinctive contribution.

The president criticized some of the demands from Democrats in the ongoing efforts to avert a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.

Democrats are asking for several policy changes for immigration enforcement officers, but Republicans have been cool to many of those demands or have outright rejected them.

On one of them - unmasking agents - Trump noted Thursday that a recent court ruling rejected a ban on masks for federal law enforcement officers.

“We have to protect our law enforcement,” Trump said during a question-and-answer exchange with reporters. On Democrats, Trump said “they have some things that are really very hard to -- very, very hard to approve, frankly.”

In revoking the endangerment finding, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the Trump administration was also ending a government push to install what he called the “Obama switch.” The feature aimed at reducing fuel consumption and emissions while a car is on but not moving.

“There will be no more climate participation trophies awarded to manufacturers for making Americans cars die at every red light and stop sign,” Zeldin said at the White House on Thursday. “It’s over, done, finished.” Zeldin also referred to the feature as the “Obama switch.”

The Trump administration revoked a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, the most aggressive move by the president to roll back climate regulations.

President Donald Trump made the announcement at the White House, Thursday.

The rule finalized by the EPA rescinds a 2009 government declaration known as the “endangerment finding” that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

“This determination had no basis in fact whatsoever,” Trump said.

U.S. deputy ambassador Tammy Bruce called on the U.N. Security Council “to impose consequences” – U.N. language for sanctions – against those who fail to implement existing U.N. penalties on Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

She told the U.N.’s most powerful body that Iran is supplying the Houthis with weapons, other military materiel, logistical and intelligence support, enabling the militant group’s “destabilizing terrorist activities.”

Existing sanctions on the Houthis include an arms embargo, and travel ban and asset freeze on designated individuals.

The Houthis have attacked ships in the Red Sea and have detained dozens of U.N. staff, diplomatic staffers including from the U.S., and civil society members.

The acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is defending the use of warrants signed just by an ICE officer and not an independent judge to forcibly enter a home to make an arrest.

The Associated Press reported last month that ICE was asserting sweeping power through the use of administrative warrants in its enforcement operations.

Administrative warrants have historically have not been sufficient to overcome Fourth Amendment protections that guard against illegal searches.

Todd Lyons argued there is case law in Minnesota which allows officers to enter a home to catch a fugitive using only an administrative warrant. Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut disputed that.

Blumenthal, who compared the ICE administrative warrants to a permission slip, said they aren’t enough to overcome Constitutional protections.

A federal judge agreed Thursday to temporarily block the Pentagon from punishing Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, a former Navy pilot, for participating in a video that called on troops to resist unlawful orders.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that Pentagon officials violated Kelly’s First Amendment free speech rights and “threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees.”

Kelly, who represents Arizona, sued in federal court to block his Jan. 5 censure from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

In November, Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers appeared on a video in which they urged troops to uphold the Constitution and not to follow unlawful military directives from the Trump administration.

Republican President Donald Trump accused the lawmakers of sedition “punishable by DEATH” in a social media post days later.

Hegseth said Kelly’s censure was “a necessary process step” to proceedings that could result in a demotion from the senator’s retired rank of captain and subsequent reduction in retirement pay.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was skeptical that U.S. nuclear talks with Iran will lead to a breakthrough but described his meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House as “excellent.”

Speaking to reporters Thursday in Washington before boarding a plane to return to Israel, Netanyahu said Trump believes that his terms and Iran’s “understanding that they made a mistake the last time when they did not reach an agreement, may lead them to agree to conditions that will enable a good agreement to be reached.”

Netanyahu said he “did not hide” his own “general skepticism” about any deal and stressed that any agreement must include concessions about Iran’s ballistic missiles program and support for militant proxies.

He added that the conversation Wednesday with Trump, which lasted more than two hours, included a number of other subjects, including Gaza and regional developments but focused on the negotiations with Iran.

The deadly collision between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter over the Potomac River last year is the subject of a Senate Commerce Committee hearing led by its chairman Ted Cruz.

Senators have a specific fix in mind as they question National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy. They want the House to pass a unanimously approved Senate bill to require the use of advanced locator systems in the cockpits of all aircraft around busy airports.

These systems broadcast already location data to the tower but another system the bill would require can receive that information and show pilots the locations of other aircraft. Families of the 67 killed say they could have prevented the collision. Sen. Cruz said he’s concerned about talk of exempting regional airlines and private jets from the ROTOR act.

“Flying can only be safe when everyone follows the same standards,” Cruz said.

Homendy said American Airlines leads the industry in retrofits to install the warning systems. She said the airline told her it costs less than $50,000 per plane.

The Democratic governor called the crackdown an “unnecessary, unwarranted and in many cases unconstitutional assault on our state.”

“It’s going to be a long road,” Walz told a news conference Thursday. “Minnesotans are decent, caring loving neighbors and they’re also some of the toughest people you’ll find. And we’re in this as long as it takes.”

In a slow, moment-by-moment analysis, Sen. Rand Paul showed a video of the death of Alex Pretti during a hearing on the Minnesota immigration enforcement operation.

Paul along with the ranking member Gary Peters of Michigan frequently stopped the video to ask questions of Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott.

At one point, Paul stopped the video and said he didn’t see “any resistance” from Pretti. Scott argued that Pretti was “not complying. He’s not following any guidance. He’s fighting back nonstop.”

“Everything was retreat,” Paul said, saying he didn’t even see a “hint” of aggression on Pretti’s part.

“I don’t think that’s de-escalatory,” Paul said, of the officers’ actions in the video.

The overnight attacks come as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow was “hesitating” about another round of U.S.-brokered talks on stopping the fighting.

Washington has proposed further negotiations next week between Russian and Ukrainian delegations either in Miami or Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, which was the location of the last meeting, Zelenskyy said late Wednesday.

Ukraine “immediately confirmed” it would attend, he said. “So far, as I understand it, Russia is hesitating,” Zelenskyy told reporters in a messaging app interview late Wednesday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that another round of talks was expected “soon” but gave no further details.

American officials made no comment on the possibility of further talks as part of a yearlong peace effort by the Trump administration. Zelenskyy said last week that the United States has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a deal.

▶ Read more

___

This item has been corrected to show that Netanyahu said Trump believes the talks may lead to a deal, not that the Israeli leader thinks they will.