CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (April 9, 2025)—Just weeks after meeting with CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, and other oil and gas corporations at the White House, President Trump has signed a new executive order targeting states' rights, including laws and lawsuits related to environmental justice, pollution standards, and fossil fuel industry-driven climate damages, among other giveaways to the corporations.
Below is a statement by Kathy Mulvey, the accountability campaign director for the Climate & Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
“This executive order is a direct attack on states’ rights to protect their residents from the climate crisis. It’s a clear attempt to silence communities demanding justice and accountability from the polluting corporations that have lied to the public for decades. State and local governments have both the authority and the responsibility to act, especially when federal leadership fails—and this overreaching order aims to intimidate state officials and obstruct that ability.
“Today, one in four people in the United States live in a state, territory, or municipality that is suing major fossil fuel corporations to hold them accountable for climate damages and deception. Separately, a growing number of U.S. state legislatures are considering so-called climate superfund laws, which would require the corporations responsible for the most heat-trapping emissions to help pay for the growing costs to protect public infrastructure from climate-driven damages, such as wildfires, floods and extreme heat.
“Legal arguments like federal preemption—which mischaracterize the purpose of these lawsuits—have failed repeatedly in the courts. They are even less credible now that the Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to federal climate, clean energy, public health and environmental protections.
“Trump’s Department of Justice may not be able to do much to stop climate accountability litigation that is proceeding in state courts across the country. But this executive order is a clarion call to advocates: we must urge our representatives in Congress to resist attempts by the fossil fuel industry and its allies to pass some form of liability waiver and get off scot-free for decades of deception, pollution, and massive damage to people and the planet. The science is strong, the evidence is clear, and the movement for climate accountability is only growing. No executive order can delete the science or erase the damage done.”
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