Dear John,

In a bombshell article, The Washington Post is reporting the Trump administration cut corners and ignored warnings from career professionals at the Environmental Protection Agency in its rush to jam through reckless attacks on strong pollution and mileage standards for cars and light-duty trucks.
 
Thanks to your support, we’ve made defending strong clean car standards a top priority in our legal defense and climate advocacy work. That’s because the stakes are so high. Not only will the administration’s rollback spew more climate pollution into our atmosphere, it’ll contribute to more asthma attacks and more premature deaths as well as hundreds of billions of dollars wasted at the gas pump.
 
Now, thanks to today’s article, we see just how determined the administration has been to rush through their weaker standards.
 
One January document obtained by The Post revealed that EPA officials were not given sufficient time to review the Transportation Department’s analysis on carbon dioxide emissions and these officials had not seen its final environmental impact statement on climate and air quality impacts or on health effects. The document also identifies numerous “factually incorrect statements and errors, including false statements about EPA’s technical work” in the draft rule.
 
Two months later and four days before the new rule was signed by EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, an EPA official emailed superiors that the Department of Transportation failed to address more than 250 comments from EPA experts and that, “Factually inaccurate text has still not been corrected.” The official warned these inaccuracies could be challenged in court.
 
And that’s exactly what we intend to do. As we gear up to confront the administration’s flawed automobile rollbacks, their sloppiness strengthens our hand. Peter Zalzal, one of our lead attorneys, told The Post, “The agency here has adopted a rule that, by their own analysis and all scenarios, hurts the public and runs contrary to the agency’s mandate. It is increasing fuel use, it is increasing pollution and it is hurting the public.”
 
We are confident, based on the record and the law, we will prevail. Indeed, we have proven to be more than a match for the Trump administration. They have not completed, and successfully defended in court, rollbacks of a single one of EDF’s priorities to protect climate and air pollution limits on the largest polluting sectors – transportation, oil and gas, and fossil fuel power plants – responsible for the majority of warming pollution and tens of thousands of premature deaths.

But we can’t take anything for granted. This will still be a major battle. Thanks to your support, we will aggressively defend strong clean car standards in court – and we will win.
 
Please help us fight back by donating to our Legal Defense Fund today.
 
Thank you for standing with us,
Sam Parry
Director of Membership
 
P.S. The Post article does require a subscription. But if you already have one or would like to start a trial subscription, you can read today’s article here.
 
Rest assured, we will do all we can to fight back on this and the many other attacks on our clean air, public health and climate protections. I can’t thank you enough for standing with us especially during these trying and stressful times.