From a strip mall mailbox to the highest levels of EPA and DOJ, this is what regulatory capture looks like in real time. Read our full investigation here: fieldnotes.co/reporting/ce...
This isn’t a coincidence; it’s infrastructure. CEA exists to launder both far-right cash and oil & gas arguments—all while serving as a revolving door between government and industry.
The group has received 💰💰💰 in dark money from climate-denial funders tied to Koch networks, far-right culture warriors, and fossil fuel interests.
How does this connect to CEA? Well. CEA’s legal filings were often drafted by top industry firms–including lawyers defending Chevron, Energy Transfer, and fossil fuel trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute–and quietly repackaged as “independent” submissions.
EPA chief Lee Zeldin called it the “largest deregulatory action in U.S. history" and promised MAGA supporters it’ll be “a dagger in the heart of the climate change religion.” The reversal will likely rollback rules on power plants, cars & trucks, oil & gas pollution and more.
At least *nine* current Trump officials previously worked for CEA as a director or outside counsel. And roughly 1/2 were directly involved in Trump’s plan to reverse the endangerment finding, aka the scientific basis for nearly ALL climate regulation.
Also super sketchy? CEA’s registered at a rented mailbox in a Texas strip mall. Its shipping-store home promises its private mailboxes offer “Anonymity & Privacy” and, unlike a PO Box, “a ‘real address.’” Oh, and CEA lists *0* employees on its site. All super normal.
CEA takes money from ultra-wealthy conservative donors (the usual suspects) ➡️pays oil & gas lawyers to produce pro-fossil fuel work ➡️submits that work to the government under CEA’s name. It’s basically laundering industry influence through a nonprofit front.
The Center for Environmental Accountability (CEA) claims to promote “transparency” in environmental policy. In reality? It functions as a dark-money middleman for oil & gas interests and far-right culture warriors.
🚨There’s been a lot going on, so you may have missed the @politico.com investigation based on Fieldnotes research revealing how an obscure non-profit w/ deep ties to the far right, oil & gas corps, and the Trump admin is helping to stamp out the foundation of climate policy. bit.ly/3PzH11z 🧵
ICYMI: Groups have already sued over the endangerment finding. Be sure to check out our previous posts pointing out who was behind the effort to begin with and what it means for oil & gas trade groups like API.
Learn more by checking out our analysis (in collaboration with @emorwee.bsky.social at HEATED): heated.world/p/trump-is-w...
Text: American Petroleum Institute SVP of Policy, Economics and Regulatory Affairs Dustin Meyer: “Today’s action appropriately ends the previous administration’s EV mandates, which effectively banned new gas-powered vehicles and represented a clear case of regulatory overreach at the expense of American consumers. We continue to support smart, effective federal regulation of emissions - including methane from oil and gas operations. Our focus now is working on durable policies that reduce emissions while meeting growing energy demand.”
In EPA’s press release on the endangerment finding, API praises the agency’s tailpipe rule repeal, but notably doesn’t mention that EPA just killed the finding that underpins nearly all U.S. climate regs.
Weird, right? Unless API is scared the extreme rollback might backfire...
After decades of denial, delay, and sabotage, API is gambling it can erase regulation and still escape accountability for lying to the public and driving climate change. We’ll see what the courts say.
Read more in our piece in collaboration with @emorwee.bsky.social at HEATED:
A screenshot from API’s 2026 agenda reads: “Stop Extreme Climate Liability Policy. Protect U.S. energy producers and consumers from abusive state climate lawsuits and the expansion of climate ‘superfund’ policies that bypass Congress and threaten affordability.”
Now API’s right-wing allies are racing to lock the courthouse doors by:
➡️asking SCOTUS to block climate cases
➡️scrubbing climate damage tools from EPA sites
➡️pushing state laws to ban climate liability lawsuits
API included these efforts as a top priority in its 2026 agenda.
Quote from John B. McCuskey — West Virginia Attorney General: “And so you take $75 billion and multiply it by 13, 15, then it becomes an industry-destroying problem. That is unsustainable. If they have to pay $7 trillion over the next 15 years, there will be no more oil industries. There will be no more coal industries. There will be no more natural gas industries. So that is why this fight right now is so massively important. Because if we lose one, we lose them all.”
Here’s West Virginia AG John McCuskey, a staunch industry ally, explaining the risk at a recent Federalist Society event.
But that only lasted a few minutes. Once the repeal became inevitable, API flip-flopped AGAIN and now says it supports the repeal.
API wanted weak regulation and no accountability. Instead, it’s getting no rules and a surge of climate lawsuits. And major oil corporations are scared.
In a regulatory comment on EPA’s proposed endangerment finding rescission, API writes: “First, API believes EPA has authority to regulate GHGs under the CAA, but agrees with EPA’s proposal that the extent of its authority to regulate GHG emissions from motor vehicles under CAA § 202(a) is constrained by the lack of clear Congressional authorization to effectively mandate the production and sale of ZEVs. API agrees that the ‘major questions doctrine’ should be invoked for the purpose of concluding that EPA may not do so.”
Lately, API has been scrambling. In July, the trade org actually warned EPA not to go *too far.* They insisted the agency actually DOES have authority to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act. Wait, what?
Enter Trump’s EPA, which worked with a sledgehammer, not a scalpel. By claiming EPA *never* had authority to regulate greenhouse gases in the first place, the administration risks blowing up API’s own legal defense.
API eased off from attacking the endangerment finding and tried to keep a paper-thin version of regulation alive. They wanted just enough to block lawsuits, but not enough to cut demand for their products. At least, that was the plan.
How does this tie together? Oil majors use federal climate rules as a legal shield, often arguing that state climate laws and lawsuits are “preempted” if the EPA is already regulating emissions. But now, no regulation = no shield.
Then, in 2015, something shifted. Not because API finally accepted climate science (let’s not get crazy), but because climate liability lawsuits started going after oil & gas giants like Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP. All of a sudden federal regulation started to look, shall we say, useful.
➡️They tried to stop the finding before it existed.
➡️They sued after it was finalized in 2009.
➡️They lost – repeatedly – all the way up to the Supreme Court.
API laid this groundwork for decades: lobbying, litigation, and flooding regulators with climate denial to argue that the EPA had no authority to regulate greenhouse gases in the first place.
Last Thursday, Trump ripped out that foundation. Now, oil & gas companies are terrified that killing federal climate rules will leave them exposed to climate lawsuits… And no one is more responsible for this mess, or panicked about it, than the American Petroleum Institute (API).
The endangerment finding is EPA’s determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, which is what legally *requires* the federal government to regulate climate pollution under the Clean Air Act. It’s the foundation of U.S. climate regulation.
Fieldnotes researcher Ted Auch, who has spent over a decade researching industry waste, sums it up: “I think at best they had a back-of-the-envelope calculation as to the capacity of these formations to take this waste, at worst it was just a rubber stamp.”
This isn’t a quirk, it’s an ongoing policy decision affecting water safety, environmental justice, and public health all over the country.
Experts now raise the alarm: EPA currently enables these practices, even though risks to drinking water and public health are apparent.
The result? Trillions of gallons of toxic water is forced underground every year with little federal oversight and a patchwork of state regulation.
