Health and environment advocacy groups in the United States are suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw a key 2009 climate change ruling known as the “endangerment finding”.

That finding had established that greenhouse gases are a risk to public health and environmental safety, given that they are the primary drivers of climate change. It formed the legal basis for many regulatory policies aimed at curbing climate change.

When US President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and a “con job”, rescinded the declaration in February this year, the EPA supported the move, deeming it the “single largest deregulatory action in US history”.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday this week, alleges that the Trump administration’s decision will risk the health and welfare of US citizens.

“Repealing the Endangerment Finding endangers all of us. People everywhere will face more pollution, higher costs, and thousands of avoidable deaths,” Peter Zalzal, the associate vice president of clean air strategies at the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

Trump’s revocation of the endangerment finding is the latest in a series of steps he has taken to prioritise deregulation, boost fossil fuel production and reverse climate regulations.

But Trump is not the first US president to enact policy damaging to the environment. Here’s how decades of US policy have harmed the environment before he arrived in the White House

What is the ‘endangerment finding’?

The endangerment finding was established under the presidency of Democrat Barack Obama. It states that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare.

That ruling allowed the EPA under President Obama to move forward on policy aimed at limit the release of greenhouse gases in the US, Michael Kraft, professor emeritus of political science and public and environmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, told Al Jazeera.

Under the endangerment finding, power plants were required to meet federal limits on carbon emissions or risk being shut down. This forced oil and gas companies to invest more to detect and fix methane leaks, curb flaring, and improve tailpipe and fuel‑economy standards to enable automobile companies to manufacture more efficient, lower‑emitting vehicles.

What does rescinding it mean?

“By allowing for increased pollution, these recent changes [by the Trump administration] will harm practically every single person on the planet,” Washington, DC-based policy researcher Brett Heinz told Al Jazeera.

“People living near fossil fuel facilities will be some of the most immediately affected, as they will be exposed to the new air and water pollution unleashed by deregulatory policies,” Heinz added.

Without the endangerment finding in place, the EPA has lost a key legal basis on which to limit greenhouse gas emissions, making it easier for coal plants, oil refineries and petrochemical complexes to run older, dirtier equipment for longer, expand without installing modern pollution controls, and emit more soot, smog‑forming gases and toxic chemicals into nearby communities.

Heinz explained that higher greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels in power plants, cars and industry as well as continued deforestation will also amplify the dangers posed by natural disasters. This is because increased warming exacerbates heatwaves, storms, floods and droughts, and raises sea levels – all of which turn existing natural hazards into more frequent and more destructive disasters.

“The only people who will benefit from these decisions are a small handful of wealthy fossil fuel executives and shareholders, who will see healthy profits while the world grows sick. These fossil fuel elites, many of whom contributed money to Trump’s presidential campaign, have now gotten a return on this investment,” Heinz said.

Experts say that Trump’s decision to entirely do away with environmental policy is unlike any president before him.

“The White House’s tidal wave of new pro-pollution policies is completely unprecedented. While past administrations have modified environmental rules, the second Trump administration is essentially trying to eliminate them entirely. So far, this has been the most radically anti-environmental presidency in American history,” Heinz said.

How have previous US presidents endangered the environment?

Trump is by no means the first US president to enact policy which is damaging to the environment, however.

Under Republican Theodore Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909, Congress passed the Reclamation (Newlands) Act of 1902, which treated land and rivers primarily as raw material for large infrastructure projects rather than as ecosystems in need of protection.

This was furthered by Democrat Harry Truman, who was president from 1945 to 1953 and pushed for rapid post‑war industrial and suburban expansion by commissioning the construction of interstate highways and promoting car‑centric development.

Under Republican Dwight Eisenhower, who was president from 1953 to 1961, the interstate highway system burgeoned, and the private car became a developmental priority in the US.

While Republican Richard Nixon, who was president from 1969 to 1974, signed key environmental laws, he also backed massive fossil‑fuel expansion. Under Nixon, the highly toxic herbicide, known as Agent Orange, was used by the US military during the Vietnam War.

Republican Ronald Reagan, who was president from 1981 to 1989, appointed people to the EPA and the Department of Interior who pushed for expanded oil, gas, coal and timber extraction on public lands.

To facilitate this, they favoured deregulation and industry interests, and rolled back existing environmental policy, slashing budgets for EPA enforcement of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, easing rules on toxic emissions and pesticides, and opening up more federal land – including wilderness and wildlife habitat – to oil, gas, mining and logging activities.

Republican George W Bush, who was president from 2001 to 2009, refused to ratify the 1997 UN-backed emissions reductions Kyoto Protocol and actively undermined global climate negotiations by formally withdrawing US support for Kyoto in 2001, appointing senior officials who questioned climate science, and pushing voluntary, industry-friendly approaches instead of binding emissions cuts.

While Obama, who was president from 2009 to 2017, introduced several landmark climate regulations, he also oversaw the fracking boom, making the US the world’s largest oil and gas producer, and locking in long-term fossil infrastructure.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves blasting water, sand and chemicals into shale rock to release oil and gas, a process believed to cause methane leaks, groundwater contamination, heavy water use and increased local air pollution.

Democrat Joe Biden, who was president from 2021 to 2024, approved large fossil projects such as the Willow project in Alaska. This involved oil development on federal land in the National Petroleum Reserve, projected to pump hundreds of millions of barrels of crude over several decades.

Figures released by the the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) suggested that the project would release 239 million to 280 million tonnes of greenhouse gases over its lifetime. The project, approved in 2023 and ongoing, was projected to continue for 30 years.

Biden also backed LNG export growth by approving new and expanded export terminals and long‑term export licences, allowing companies to lock into multidecade contracts to ship US gas to Europe and Asia.

Is this a partisan issue?

No.

“The failure of US policymakers to aggressively tackle global warming is not so much a Democrat versus Republican matter,” Steinberg said.

“It’s neoliberalism, a form of corporate freedom, that is the heart of the problem. A bipartisan consensus on the need for economic growth has led to a general trend toward weakening environmental regulations,” he added.

The US once led the world in conservation by creating an extensive national park system in the 19th century, Ted Steinberg, a history professor at the US-based Case Western Reserve University, told Al Jazeera.

“That was then. US corporate interests, especially the fossil fuel industry, combined with the one-party political system, in which both Republicans and Democrats indenture themselves to the business class, have caused the United States to drag its feet on global warming,” Steinberg said.

What is the history of Washington’s impact on the environment?

The US has historically been the largest contributor to global warming, experts say.

“As in most countries, US environmental policy has been a response to the problems caused by industrialisation and urbanisation, starting in the mid-19th century and proceeding from there, happening at the local, state and national levels,” Chad Montrie, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, told Al Jazeera.

“Much of that policy has been limited and inadequate, especially when corporations were able to exert their influence, but in some cases, it has been ahead of what other nations were doing,” Montrie, who specialises in environmental history, added.

There was a time when environmental policy was bipartisan. The EPA was, in fact, created by Republican President Richard Nixon in 1970.

“It wasn’t until the rise of pro-business politics in the 1980s that Republicans like President Reagan took a hard turn against environmental protections,” Heinz said.

“The Democratic Party continues to believe in environmental protection and climate-friendly policies to some degree, while the Republican Party has become one of the few political parties worldwide that completely denies the scientific facts around climate change.”

How does this affect the rest of the world?

“US policy often sets the standards for policy in other parts of the world, both because of its cultural influence and because of the control that the US has over global bodies like the International Monetary Fund,” Heinz said.

“Right now, the US is actively pushing dirty fossil fuels on the rest of the world and even threatening some of its allies for trying to negotiate new environmental agreements.”

Heinz explained that this pressure, coupled with soaring energy prices, seems to have convinced Europe to retreat from some of their climate goals. Household electricity prices jumped by about 20 percent across the European Union between 2021 and 2022, according to Eurostat data.

Heinz said that if the latest United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP negotiations are any indication, global climate ambition appears to be on the decline right now.

The latest conference concluded in November 2025 in Brazil with a draft proposal which did not include a roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels, nor did it mention the term “fossil fuels” at all. This drew rebuke from several countries attending the conference.

“So long as Donald Trump remains in office, the hope of future generations relies upon the nations of the world coming together and acting responsibly to preserve a healthy environment at a time when the United States has gone truly mad.”

Rubaya, Democratic Republic of the Congo – More than a month after a mine collapse in the eastern Congolese city of Rubaya killed hundreds of people, heavy rains once again lashed the area, destabilising the open, steep mine slopes and causing another deadly landslide.

In the aftermath of the March 3 disaster, the Congolese government said 200 people had died at the Kasasa mining site, including 70 children – the majority of them labourers in artisanal mining operations in the resource-rich city.

Fifteen-year-old Mishiki Nshokano* was one of the children who survived that day.

Now recovering at an undisclosed location in the city of Goma, some 60km (37 miles) away, he tries not to think about the trauma he suffered and the friends he lost.

But he says he will soon have to return to the mines, because he has “no other choice”.

Rubaya, in eastern DRC’s North Kivu province, is a town that sits on stores of coltan, tin, and tungsten – some of the world’s most valuable minerals that are essential for use in modern technology.

But many of those who mine these raw materials used in smartphones and electric cars – especially the children – say they don’t know what the material is used for and their main concern is just getting enough to make a daily living.

Nshokano, the eldest of three children, has worked as an artisanal miner in Rubaya for the past four years to support his family.

Though child labour is technically illegal in DRC, much of the informal mining sector is unregulated.

In Rubaya and towns around it, the situation is further complicated by violence between the Congolese army and various armed groups – chief among them the Rwanda-backed M23, that seized control of Rubaya in 2024 before taking other key cities, including Goma, last year.

‘Mining is our livelihood’

At the Rubaya mine, Nshokano mainly transports sacks of coltan, earning the equivalent of 10,000 Congolese francs ($4) a day, he says.

“The little I earn, I take it home to my mum,” Nshokano says.

“She manages it so that it helps us to survive.”

Born in nearby Luunje village, Nshokano recalls his younger years attending school in a clean uniform, with big dreams of one day becoming a surgeon.

But soon, things changed for the worst and his dreams were dashed.

In 2022, when he was only 11 years old, his father, then an artisanal miner in Rubaya, died in a landslide at the Gakombe-Kalambairo mining site.

“At the time, my father was struggling to send us to school on the little he earned. I was in Year 4 of primary school and it sent shockwaves through the family,” Nshokano says.

“As mining was our livelihood, I left school to help my family survive,” he told Al Jazeera.

Before his father died in 2022, things were difficult at the mines but in some ways they were better than they are now. His father earned more than 25,000 francs (nearly $12) a day – three times what he earns – digging for coltan at “unpredictable depths”, he says.

“Things were better back then. With that, we had a place to live, food to eat and we were sent to school.

“When he passed away, everything fell apart.”

Despite DRC’s vast mineral wealth, more than 70 percent of Congolese live on less than $2.15 a day, according to the World Bank.

‘Deplorable conditions’

In DRC, employing children under the age of 18 in the mines is strictly prohibited by the Law 09/001 of January 10, 2009 on the protection of children.

This legislation is supplemented by the Mining Code (revised in 2018) and various circulars from the Ministry of Mines which ban economic exploitation, including extraction, transport and marketing by minors.

However, according to the United States Bureau of International Labor Affairs, in a 2023 report, the DRC has made only minimal progress in its efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labour.

The report noted that there is “almost no labor oversight” in cobalt mines in eastern DRC where “labor exploitation is common”.

“In particular, small-scale mining in the region is known to involve people of all ages, including children, who often work in deplorable conditions without protective equipment, sometimes inside pre-collapsing shafts, to bring mineral-encrusted rocks to the surface or collect minerals for exportation,” it said.

The report said that despite initiatives to combat child labour, about half of the workers it interviewed said they work at mining sites where children work.

A 2019 report by the International Labour Organization also pointed out that child labour is rife in the mines where cobalt and coltan are extracted.

Nshokano claims to have seen signs in certain parts of Rubaya banning the use of children in the mining areas. But in his view, the ban just exists in theory.

In reality, he and many children find themselves trapped in the mines, in conditions that jeopardise their future.

The United Kingdom-based organisation Global Witness last month called for businesses and governments to better consider the human cost of mineral mining, following the “recent horrific mine disaster’’ in DRC.

The campaign group also exposed how coltan is smuggled to Rwanda and sold into international markets, demanding companies financing, producing, using or trading DRC’s coltan ensure that their investments and operations as well as those of their subsidiaries and suppliers “adhere to international environmental and human rights standards, and all existing Congolese laws”.

Last year, the DRC and the US signed a strategic agreement to exchange minerals for security guarantees from Washington.

According to numerous sources, the Rubaya mine, one of the world’s largest coltan mines, is among those that the Congolese government has offered to the Americans.

‘Using’ women and children

In Rubaya in recent weeks, the green hills and busy mine slopes have been obscured by fog on many days.

Rains have continued, occasionally leading to tragedy.

A few days after the Kasasa mining site landslide that Nshokano survived, another landslide happened in the area on March 6. Media reports said a few hundred people died.

Still, in the days since, mining activities have resumed as normal. Lines of artisanal miners are once again climbing and descending the mining slopes, some with pickaxes and others with sacks of wet earth and minerals.

Congolese authorities say that since the start of this year, hundreds of people have lost their lives at the Rubaya mine, which accounts for between 15 and 30 percent of the world’s coltan.

“What we have witnessed in Rubaya is extremely serious,” Patrick Muyaya Katembwe, the Congolese government spokesperson, said on his X account on Monday.

“In 40 days, more than 600 of our compatriots have died. Yet they continue to use women and children for looting activities,” he added, referring to the M23 rebels now in control of the city.

Although the Congolese mining minister said 200 people including 70 children died in the Kasasa disaster, M23 rebel leaders denied the death toll, claiming it was an “exaggeration”.

The Congolese authorities, who are in opposition to M23, appear to be vehemently condemning the use of child labour in the Rubaya mines by the rebels.

However, observers have noted that child miners in eastern DRC have been an issue long before the M23 occupied this area in April 2024.

According to the latest studies carried out by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), an estimated 40,000 children are working in mines in the DRC.

‘If no one fights for us, we won’t survive’

While multinationals make millions of dollars in profits from what is mined in Rubaya, Nshokano and his friends are involved in mining the precious resources only as a means to ensure their daily survival.

“I’ve never been properly informed about the value of this ore mined in Rubaya,” he tells Al Jazeera.

“I know it goes abroad, but I don’t know what the white people use it for … My main focus is on my survival and that of my family.”

Nshokano regrets having to drop out of school, but says he did so not out of laziness but because of the pressures of life.

“If I’d come from a financially well-off family, I wouldn’t have dropped out of school. My father’s death made me realise I had nothing left to lose … If no one fights for us, we won’t survive,” he says.

As Nshokano recovers from his ordeal, he thinks about the people he knew and lost in the landslide.

“The images of my friends with whom I worked in the mines still haunt me,” he says. “But I must soon return to Rubaya, even though anything could happen and lives could be lost.”

With the financial pressure of needing to take care of four people, he believes he needs to go back to work.

“I have no choice and I will be returning to the mine very soon,” the 15-year-old says.

“As the eldest in the family, I carry the weight of responsibility on my shoulders so as not to let my dad down, who has passed away.

“I hope that one day, everything will be all right.”

*Name changed for safety reasons

Ukraine has sent more than 200 experts to help Gulf countries defend themselves against Iranian drones, and was preparing to send nearly three dozen more, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week.

“What is happening around Iran today is not a faraway war for us – because of the cooperation between Russia and Iran. And we do not believe we have the right to be indifferent,” Zelenskyy told the Parliament of the United Kingdom on Tuesday.

The Shahed-type drones Iran has rained down on Gulf states are the same type it sold to Russia in 2022. Russia has since produced thousands of them under licence.

Ukraine has shot down more than 44,700 of them during the war with Russia. It now has a success rate close to 90 percent, and is aiming for 95 percent. Last month, Ukraine shot down 3,238 Shahed-type drones – a record, said its Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

They made up only a part of more than 15,000 Russian drones Ukraine shot down in the same month.

Zelenskyy is now selling that know-how to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

He also offered to protect British bases in Cyprus, which were struck by a Shahed on March 2.

“Our experts would place interception teams, and set up radars and acoustic coverage,” he told British MPs. “If Iran launched a large-scale attack – similar to Russian attacks – we would guarantee protection.”

United States allies in the Gulf have been vulnerable to Iranian drones because they have focused on high-altitude systems to stop ballistic missiles, ignoring low-altitude threats, said Oslo University missile expert Fabian Hoffmann.

The problem is not efficacy, but expense. US ballistic interceptors cost up to $10m a shot, compared to roughly $3,000 for a Ukrainian interceptor drone, to shoot down a $50,000 Shahed.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine was “capable of producing at least 2,000 effective and combat-proven interceptors every day”, referring to drones developed by Ukrainian companies to shoot down other drones. “We need about 1,000 interceptors a day, and we can supply at least another 1,000 a day to our allies,” Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine counterattacks

Ukraine’s offensive capability has also increased, said Russian former Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, who now serves as the secretary of Russia’s Security Council.

Air attacks on Russian infrastructure increased fourfold to 23,000 last year, he said, compared to 6,200 in 2024.

Over the same period, he said, “sabotage and terrorist attacks” had increased by 40 percent to 1,830.

Ukraine has been consciously targeting Russian energy infrastructure and defence manufacturing sites since last year, and has been developing its own long-range drones to make up for a dearth of Western-provided kit.

On Saturday, Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces struck the Afipsky Oil Refinery and the port of Kavkaz, both in Russia’s Black Sea region of Krasnodar Krai. Reports suggested this may have destroyed the refinery’s main refining unit.

Two days later, they struck the Aviastar aircraft manufacturing plant in the city of Ulyanovsk, which produces transport and tanker aircraft. It was unclear how much damage was caused.

On Tuesday, Ukraine set alight the Yugnefteprodukt oil depot in Krasnodar Krai and an aircraft repair site in the Novgorod region.

Ukraine has also intensified its strikes against Russian logistics, equipment and manpower closer to the front line, said the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank.

“These strikes have largely targeted Russian forces and assets in eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russian forces have been prioritising offensive operations in recent weeks,” said the ISW.

But Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskii said it was Ukraine that had transitioned to offensive operations on the southern front. “The Ukrainian defence forces are holding specified positions, destroying the enemy, gradually advancing, and fighting for the liberation of populated areas,” he said on Saturday.

Ukrainian military observer Konstantyn Mashovets said he believed Ukrainian forces have recaptured 400sq km (154sq miles) of territory in this direction since January.

These counterattacks were forcing Russia to redeploy units and reserves to the southern front, observed the ISW, suggesting Mashovets’s observations were correct.

Oil spike is good news for Russia

Perhaps the only good news Russia has recently had comes from the Gulf, where Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz to all oil exports except its own and a handful of pre-approved countries’ tankers, trapping an estimated 300 tankers inside.

The administration of US President Donald Trump suspended sanctions on Russian oil for the month to April 11 in an effort to curb soaring oil prices. That has meant a double windfall for Russia.

“We are now giving Russia $140m a day by releasing them from these sanctions,” US Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, told NBC News. “The Trump administration is rewarding Russia at Ukraine’s expense.”

“Russia’s windfall now exceeds anything we saw in 2022 after the Ukraine invasion,” when oil prices again spiked, wrote Robin Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank.

The Financial Times estimated that Russia had earned an extra $1.3bn-$1.9bn by mid-March, a figure that could rise to $4.9bn by the end of the month.

Oil was the cause of Russia’s other good news of the week. Hungary reversed its approval of a 90-billion-euro ($104bn) loan to Ukraine on March 16, insisting that Ukraine repair a pipeline providing it with Russian oil. The Druzhba pipeline was shut down after a Russian strike damaged it in late January. Ukraine has said that repairing it is a difficult technical task under constant threat of further Russian attacks.