500 and Counting: Tracking an Unprecedented Assault on Public Health, the Environment, and Good Governance

This week, NRDC's White House Watch surpassed a sobering milestone: 500 documented actions taken by the Trump administration that threaten public health, environmental protections, climate progress, scientific integrity, and responsible governance.

That works out to roughly one harmful action every day since President Trump returned to office. And it signifies how this administration is, by far and away, the worst administration in history when it comes to the environment and public health. 

White House Watch was created to systematically document actions across the federal government—from the White House, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, and dozens of other entities. But the list is not a collection of isolated actions; it represents a coordinated effort to dismantle decades of hard-won safeguards that protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, the public lands we share, and the institutions we rely on every single day.

Among the most alarming actions documented by White House Watch:

• Repealing the EPA’s endangerment finding—the scientific and legal foundation that allows the federal government to regulate climate pollution—in part, by cynically arguing that fighting climate change is “futile”
• Proposing to scrap carbon pollution standards for power plants, one of the nation’s largest industrial sources of greenhouse gas emissions
• Granting exemptions to more than 180 industrial facilities from hazardous air pollution requirements, allowing increased emissions of toxic pollutants linked to cancer, respiratory disease, and other serious health impacts
• Delaying methane pollution standards for the oil and gas industry, despite methane’s role as one of the most potent drivers of climate change
• Rolling back drinking water protections for toxic PFAS “forever chemicals,” despite evidence linking exposure to cancer, immune system damage, and other serious health risks
• Using a rarely convened committee to unilaterally exempt oil and gas companies in the Gulf of Mexico from critical endangered species protections
• Blocking or slowing solar, wind, and electric vehicle infrastructure projects that would lower costs, improve reliability, and reduce pollution
• Dismantling scientific and technical capacity across federal agencies through staffing cuts, grant cancellations, and attacks on career experts and researchers

The consequences of such actions are already being felt. Americans face higher energy costs as clean energy projects are delayed or canceled. Communities are more vulnerable to pollution as oversight and enforcement are weakened. Public health protections are being dismantled even as climate-fueled disasters become more frequent and more costly. And the United States is ceding ground in the global clean energy economy at precisely the moment that the rest of the world is accelerating investment.

NRDC is leading the pushback against this administration’s reckless agenda. We have filed or joined numerous lawsuits—nearly 50 in total—to halt or reverse these actions; submitted hundreds of thousands of public comments opposing rules that will make all of us less healthy and less well off; and worked with local policymakers and advocates to hold the line in their communities. These efforts matter. Time and again, courts have ordered the administration to follow the law, agencies have been forced to release illegally withheld funds, and some actions have been overturned altogether. Each victory helps protect communities and the environment from even greater harm. The administration may be moving fast, but accountability is moving too.

The 500th entry to White House Watch is, sadly, not an end point. It is simply a reminder of the extraordinary pace at which this administration is reshaping federal policy and of the importance in maintaining a factual, comprehensive record of those actions. NRDC’s White House Watch tracker and weekly newsletter both exist to ensure that the record is preserved. We will continue to hold this administration to account, one action at a time.