Two brand-new lawsuits against Trump -- climate denialism and the Trump arch aspiration

 two brand-new lawsuits against Trump

• Public Citizen 

  citizen.org

  From:president@citizen.org

  
  

  To:m.mk@...

  Wed, Feb 25 2026 at 3:24 PM

  Last week we sent you an update on the 33 lawsuits Public Citizen had filed against the administration since Donald Trump returned to power.
  
  Well, we have sued the regime two more times since then, bringing the total number of cases to 35.
  
  One quick note before we tell you more about these two latest lawsuits: Even though the justice system can move slowly, in 12 of these 35 cases — more than a third so far — we have already either won the case outright, gotten a preliminary ruling that limits whatever bad thing the regime is trying to do, or forced the administration to reveal information.
  
  Lawsuit #34 is about the Trump regime’s climate denialism and its illegal attempt to undermine the very purpose of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
  

  • On February 12, Trump illegally repealed a critical element of U.S. environmental policy that is absolutely essential in the fight to avert climate disaster.

  • We’re talking about something called the “endangerment finding,” which is what gave the EPA the power to regulate greenhouse gasses that pose a risk to the health or welfare of human beings.

  • While many folks may not have been familiar with the endangerment finding up until the Trump administration declared it null and void, for over 15 years it has been the basis for actions our government took to address climate change.

  • You have to wonder what something called the Environmental Protection Agency is for if not to protect people from dangerous pollution. But if the Trump regime gets its way, “EPA” might as well stand for Enable Pollution Always.

  • Lee Zeldin, the MAGA adherent Trump installed to run the EPA, bragged that repealing the endangerment finding is “the single largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States” — as if that is a good thing.

  • But let’s be clear (unlike the air the Trump regime wants to force us all to breathe): Donald Trump and his administration are deregulating us into climate armageddon.

  Public Citizen is part of a coalition of health and environmental groups that is suing Trump’s EPA in federal court for abandoning — in apparent disdain for both science and the law — its duty to protect the American people from air pollution and to regulate the greenhouse gasses that fuel climate change.
  
  Lawsuit #35 is about the gargantuan, self-aggrandizing arch that Trump wants to erect in Washington, D.C., just outside the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, across from the Lincoln Memorial.
  

  • This arch joins a ballooning litany of Trump vanity projects.

  • Banners bearing his scowling face hanging from government buildings all over our nation’s capital.

  • His name affixed in golden letters to the storied Kennedy Center here in Washington, D.C.

  • His illegal demolition of the East Wing of the White House so that he can build a gaudy Billionaire Ballroom.

  • And more.

  • These are the types of things we expect from real-world despots and fictional authoritarians like Big Brother in George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

  • The law is clear — Trump does not have the authority to construct the arch without approval from Congress, which he does not have.

  Public Citizen — representing a group of Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian — is suing in federal court to stop construction of Trump’s illegal vanity arch.
  
  As noted above, the justice system can move slowly. Even so, in many cases we have already kept the Trump regime from doing maximum damage, and we have no intention of giving up the fight as our cases make their way through the courts and as we file new lawsuits.
  
  Are these lawsuits alone enough to fully defeat Trump and MAGA? Of course not. But are they a meaningful part of the pushback that is the only chance we have to collectively save our country? No doubt about it.
  
  What you and Public Citizen are doing together matters. What hundreds of other organizations, big and small, are doing matters. What millions upon millions of our fellow Americans are doing matters. We believe that to our core. We take solace in that. And we draw inspiration from that. We hope you do, too.
  
  
  If you’ve donated to Public Citizen before, thank you. If a donation is not right, we understand. Either way, thank you for being part of Public Citizen.
  
  For justice,
  
  - Lisa Gilbert & Robert Weissman, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen
  
  
  Public Citizen | 1600 20th Street NW | Washington DC 20009