The number of civil enforcement cases the EPA concluded against polluters each year, averaged per administration, the “cop on the beat” for the clean-air, clean-water, and toxic-chemical laws. Congress writes those laws; the administration decides how hard to enforce them. Enforcement has fallen for about fifteen years, and in the second Trump term's first year it collapsed to the lowest level in at least two decades.
Average EPA civil enforcement cases concluded per year, by term.
Clinton
~4,100
Bush
~4,200
The high-plateau era of enforcement, before a long, budget-driven decline began
Obama
~2,900
Falling across the term as staff and budgets eroded
Trump I
~1,670
About half the pre-2017 norm; inspections hit a two-decade low in 2020
Biden
~1,750
Trump II
collapse*
In its first year, the Justice Department filed just 16 civil pollution lawsuits, against 67 in Biden's first year and 86 in Trump's own first term, down 76% and 81%, the fewest in 20+ years (see below)
The first-year collapse, isolated
Two independent watchdogs (PEER and the Environmental Integrity Project) compared each administration's first year, the honest apples-to-apples measure, and found the same thing.
First year of term
Civil lawsuits filed against polluters
Obama (second term, 2013)
127
Trump I (2017)
86
Biden (2021)
67
Trump II (2025)
16
The table is the Environmental Integrity Project's count of complaints filed in the year after each Inauguration Day. Settlements fell too: by the same group's count, from 186 in 2013, 115 in 2017 and 112 in 2021 to 40 in 2025. PEER, which tallied cases the Justice Department settled or concluded, found 15 in 2025 against 71 in Biden's first year and 75 in Trump's first term. EPA inspections also dropped sharply. Separately, the administration announced hundreds of environmental deregulatory actions in 2025 (the EPA called one batch “the biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history”), though as of August 2026 many are still proposed or in litigation, and a court struck down the attempt to weaken the soot standard.
Read the enforcement numbers carefully. The EPA's own March 2026 report called fiscal 2025 its “strongest enforcement in nine years,” but that is misleading: the fiscal year ran partly under Biden, and about 87% of the air-pollution cases it closed were started before Trump took office. A concluded-case count measures work begun years earlier; the honest measure of what an administration itself does is new cases filed, which is where the collapse shows. Broader caveats apply too: enforcement counts reflect policy, the level of industrial activity, and the budgets Congress sets, and a low count can in principle mean fewer violations rather than fewer cops, though the parallel drop in inspections points to the latter. Trump II is a partial term.