THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

PAGE ONE

Panel 1

A black caption box. To the right, Richard Nixon holds up his trademark peace sign.

CAPTION: In 1970 Richard Nixon created THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY to enforce national standards for the health of the environment. Since then the EPA has passed The Clean Water Act, greatly reduced toxic pesticides, and made commercial products be subject to the Toxic Substances Control Act.

Panel 2

A red caption box created from the smoke billowing from the smokestacks of a polluting factory.  To the left side we see a crowd of professional-looking men and women, hovering in the smoke.  A bluebird flies up past them.

CAPTION: Chapter 13 of Project 2025 changes all that!

CAPTION: “EPA’s structure and mission should be greatly circumscribed to reflect the principles of cooperative federalism and limited government. This will require significant restructuring and streamlining of the agency.” [2025, p. 420]

BLUEBIRD: Such as?

Panel 3

An inset panel in blue. A female scientist sits in her lab, writing in a notebook and looking distressed.

CAPTION: “Resetting science advisory boards to expand opportunities for a diversity of scientific viewpoints free of potential conflicts of interest.” [2025, p. 422]

SCIENTIST: But science isn’t about viewpoints! It’s about empirical data that’s observed and tested.

Panel 4

An inset caption box in yellow sits to the right of a bald eagle, who is perched on the branch of a tree that sits across from the polluting factory.

BALD EAGLE: They won’t mess with the Clean Air Act, right?

CAPTION: Well, what about the EPA goal of restoring natural visibility by 2064?

CAPTION: “EPA should consider whether a longer timeline is less disruptive or more realistic. Regional haze rules should be revised to prevent subsequent ‘planning periods’ from being abused to compel the shutdown of disfavored facilities.” [2025, p. 424]

Panel 5

This is the bottom half of the image of the polluting factory. Green sludge spills from a drain into a formerly-blue waterway now clogged with dead fish. A man in a suit, representing the Project 2025 interests, stands on the factory wall.

CAPTION: Project 2025 wants to make the EPA more state-by-state focused…but pollution doesn’t obey regional borders. They plan to:

MAN: “review Biden-era regulations to ensure that they do not ‘overcontrol’ upwind states!” [2-25, p. 424]

CAPTION: …AND “Remove the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) for any source category that is not currently being regulated.” [2025, p. 425]

PAGE TWO

Panel 1

A red tractor-trailer races down a highway, spewing a long trail of exhaust. The quote from the 2025 document is written on a green road sign.

CAPTION: Chapter 13 suppresses almost every part of the agency, but there’s one time bomb
in there that achieves most of their goals and may impact the climate the most…

SIGN CAPTION: “update the 2009 endangerment finding” [2025, p. 425]

CAPTION: They really don’t like that part of The Clean Air Act. It says that “greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endanger both the public health and environment for current and future generations” and that combined emissions from new motor vehicles contribute to climate change.  An “update” can completely alter emissions standards for the whole country and everywhere our vehicles are used.

Panel 2

Donald Trump sits at his desk, furiously signing a document in front of him.  The intentions of the executive orders he’s signing spew out from the document in orange rays.

CAPTION: To stop progress in the meantime, Project 2025 pushes a DAY ONE EXECUTIVE ORDER. [all on page 422 of Project 2025]

TRUMP: I’m gonna demolish the Deep State!

CAPTION (four rays): Set up PAUSE AND REVIEW teams! Stop all grants to advocacy groups! Grant petitions to Reconsider and Stay rules! Review Employees–terminate newest hires!

Panel 4

A red text box.

CAPTION: It would revise documents that control regulations like the social cost of carbon, causality of health effects, low-dose risk elimination… Most things the EPA was created to protect the public from–throwing scores of civil servants out of work and neutralizing the agency.

Panel 5

A bubbling green pond featuring an angry frog on a lily pad and an sick-looking fish breaching the surface. To the left, inset, is a headshot of the Heritage Foundation’s Mandy Gunasekara.  In the bottom right is a stop sign – it says “STOP 2025.”

FROG: WHO wrote this anyway?

CAPTION: The main writer of the EPA section of Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation’s Mandy Gunasekara, former EPA official during the Trump administration.  Her Member page at The CO2 Coalition* once described her as “the architect of the Paris Accord withdrawal and repeal of the Clean Power Plan.”

CAPTION: *The CO2 Coalition is a climate crisis-denying group that champions “the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy.”

FISH: No…we didn’t make that up.

CAPTION: STOP 2025