From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarrow.

This is the Daily.

With a single monumental action expected today,

the Trump administration will eliminate its own legal authority to fight climate

change. My colleague, Lisa Friedman, has spent the past few weeks piecing together the inside story

of how a small group of activists turned that once improbable goal into reality.

It's Thursday, February 12.

Lisa, welcome back to the Daily.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

So over the summer, Lisa, you broke the story that the Trump administration was planning to roll back the legal basis for the entire government's ability to regulate greenhouse gases. Just remind us what that legal basis was and why its elimination would be so consequential. Sure. It's called

the endangerment finding, and you can think of it like the spine of America's ability to regulate

climate pollutants. Congress never explicitly told the EPA that it could regulate planet warming

emissions, but in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in a landmark ruling. It's called Massachusetts

versus EPA that greenhouse gases qualify as pollutants

under the law. And because EPA is required to set limits, required to regulate damaging

pollutants, the court told the agency, you need to determine whether these greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide,

methane, others, whether they endanger health and welfare. Two years later, the EPA, citing

a massive body of scientific evidence, came out with what is now called the endangerment finding,

that six greenhouse gases do pose a danger to public health and the environment.

And therefore should be regulated.

And therefore should be regulated.

So if you think of the endangerment finding as the spine,

...