EPA air chief Aaron Szabo to step down amid rollback push

Aaron Szabo told Environmental Protection Agency employees he would step down this month after about a year at the helm of the agency’s air office. His departure comes as the office he led moves through an aggressive rewrite of national air-quality rules that affect cars, trucks, power plants and industrial plants.

The Senate confirmed Szabo on July 23, 2025, to serve as assistant administrator for the EPA Office of Air and Radiation, the unit that oversees national air-pollution and climate-related rules. Under Szabo, the office has pursued efforts to roll back greenhouse-gas and other pollution limits, including vehicle-emissions standards, soot-related rules, methane controls and other Clean Air Act regulations.

EPA is moving to repeal the 2009 endangerment finding, the legal foundation for many federal greenhouse-gas rules. Reopening that finding affects the standards that govern emissions from the transportation and power sectors and how the federal government regulates pollution that drifts into neighborhoods along highways, near factories and around power plants.

Szabo’s record drew scrutiny before he ever took the job. He had previously helped draft an oil-and-gas trade group letter opposing methane controls, and Senate Democrats, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, criticized his nomination as too closely tied to industry and to Project 2025. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee cited his role as a contributor to the EPA chapter of Project 2025.

Trump political appointees with industry ties have been steering the exemption process for polluters seeking relief from Clean Air Act standards. The Environmental Defense Fund pointed to internal emails showing those appointees helped orchestrate the process to invite industrial sources to request exemptions from key standards.