EPA air chief Aaron Szabo to step down after rule rollbacks

Aaron Szabo told employees he will step down this month as head of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation after a year in which the agency moved to weaken a range of pollution limits. The office sits at the center of federal air policy, writing and overseeing rules for industrial and transportation emissions, air-quality monitoring, facility permitting, indoor air, radiation protection and the stratospheric ozone layer.

Szabo’s departure comes less than a year after the Senate confirmed him on July 23, 2025, by a party-line vote to run the office. He was to help implement key provisions of the Clean Air Act and the Atomic Energy Act, and Administrator Lee Zeldin called him highly qualified for the post. Szabo entered the job with a résumé that included work as a lobbyist and White House staffer, and during his confirmation process he said he has cystic fibrosis and that clean air was personally important to him.

During Szabo’s tenure, EPA moved to reconsider or weaken several Biden-era air rules, including a stricter soot standard that limits fine particulate pollution. In an August 2025 court filing, Szabo said the Trump administration intended to finish replacing that limit by February 2026. The agency also advanced efforts to roll back methane pollution rules for oil and gas, taking an early step in 2025 and later finalizing technical changes in 2026. Those changes benefit oil and gas producers, industrial facilities and other large emitters while leaving communities near highways, drilling sites and other pollution sources with the greatest exposure to soot and methane-linked contamination.

Szabo’s record has also drawn scrutiny because metadata tied him to a January 2022 comment letter from an oil and gas trade group opposing methane controls before he became a regulator. The legal fights over soot and methane rules continue.