On July 17, 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a statement highlighting steps the agency plans to take in order to fulfill President Trump’s executive order on Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence. Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a desire to change the Clean Air Act (CAA) permitting process so that the agency will only address the “minimum requirements for public participation.” Zeldin stated that the EPA will play “a major hand” in cutting down barriers for AI data centers through scaling back “prehistoric” CAA permitting requirements.