Mary Trump Warns Trump Admin’s EPA Rollbacks Will Cost Lives

Mary Trump warned that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin's rollback of climate and pollution rules will cost lives. She made the case on The Mary Trump Podcast, set against the hottest summer in 132 years of U.S. record-keeping.

On September 14, the Environmental Protection Agency repealed most greenhouse gas limits on fossil fuel power plants. Four days later, a federal judge ruled that the agency had illegally ended the $7 billion Solar for All program.

"An AP analysis found that the Trump regime's broader environmental rollbacks could eventually contribute to roughly 30,000 additional deaths annually," Mary Trump, President Donald Trump's niece and one of his most persistent critics, said.

What the AP Analysis on EPA Rollbacks Found

The figure comes from an Associated Press examination published in June 2025. It estimated that the rules the EPA had targeted would prevent more than 30,000 deaths and save at least $275 billion each year they stayed in effect.

AP's breakdown is approximate. In AP's methodology, about 10,000 Americans would be saved each year by cuts to soot, smog, mercury and lead. Roughly 25,000 more deaths a year from heat would occur around the world if the rules were scrapped and greenhouse gas emissions rose. Most of the total is heat deaths worldwide, and it assumes the rules are undone in full.

At another point in the episode, Mary Trump described the same AP finding the way AP wrote it, as protections "projected to prevent more than 30,000 deaths a year."

She also warned that "tens of thousands" and possibly hundreds of thousands "will continue to die," a larger number that no study she cited supports.

Power Plant Repeal: $310 Billion in Savings vs. Health Costs

The September repeal scraps the 2024 rules that required carbon capture at power plants. The EPA also proposed scrapping the remaining limits, ABC News reported. The administration says the move will save $310 billion and make electricity more reliable and affordable.

In its 2025 analysis of the proposed repeal, the EPA estimated that added illness and premature deaths from soot and ozone would cost $130 billion from 2026 to 2047. The final analysis, the source of the $310 billion savings figure, does not assign a dollar value to those health costs, Carnegie Mellon economist Akshaya Jha wrote for The Conversation.

When the 2024 rule was finalized, the EPA projected that in 2035 alone it would prevent up to 1,200 premature deaths, 870 hospital and emergency room visits and 1,900 new cases of asthma, Healio reported.

Zeldin's Major EPA Rollbacks at a Glance

In the Solar for All case, U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy of Rhode Island found that Congress clearly intended the EPA to keep administering grants it had already obligated, OPB reported. The program was meant to bring solar power to more than 900,000 lower-income Americans. Zeldin has called it a "boondoggle." Mary Trump said it "remains to be seen" whether the ruling will stop the administration.

On Zeldin himself, she was blunt: "Another fox in yet another henhouse."

Record Heat and Drought as the Rules Fall

The contiguous U.S. averaged 74.4 degrees from June through August, 3 degrees above the 20th-century average. That made it the warmest summer in NOAA's 132-year record, with August the hottest on record. On September 1, about 59 percent of the contiguous U.S. was in drought.

In a clip she played from his United Nations remarks, Donald Trump mocked "the very same people who said we'll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming." He added that the same people had once warned of a cooling planet, "and nobody was dead."

Trump did not say in the clip that no one has died from climate change. Mary Trump took his words that way. "It is deeply offensive to hear that man say that nobody has died from climate change," she said.

In announcing the power plant repeal, the EPA argued that the U.S. power sector's share of emissions is "relatively minor," ABC News reported. Mary Trump said the agency now says that even eliminating all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would have "no meaningful climate impact." "For them, it's all about money. It's all about enriching themselves and their cronies," she said.

What Happens Next

The EPA's proposal to repeal the last power plant limits is still open, and the agency is reviewing the Solar for All decision and considering an appeal, OPB reported.