New Delhi, Sept. 23 -- WASHINGTON - For the families living downwind of coal-fired power plants, the decision arrived without warning on a Sunday. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin signed a document eliminating the only federal rules that had required those plants to meaningfully cut their greenhouse gas output, and buried inside the same regulatory filing was a legal maneuver designed to prevent any future White House from ever putting them back.

The Trump administration's Environmental Protection Agency finalized the Partial Repeal of the Carbon Pollution Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units on September 14, wiping out one of the most consequential climate protections the Biden administration had put in place. Health gr...