Like the Environmental Integrity Project, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) analyzed court records and found a “collapse” of environmental enforcement under Trump II, with a sharp drop in civil cases settled by the DOJ that were referred by the EPA.
“The shrinkage in DOJ’s environmental docket should not be surprising. Buyouts, threatened layoffs, budget cuts, and transfers have already eliminated half of DOJ’s Environmental Enforcement Section,” PEER wrote in its January 2026 analysis.