Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Environmental Protection Agency began operation on the 2nd of December 1970, after President Richard Nixon signed an executive order. Nixon had proposed the agency on the 9th of July 1970, as an executive reorganization consolidating environmental responsibilities from multiple federal departments into one agency.
William Ruckelshaus was the EPA's first administrator, taking the oath of office on the 4th of December 1970. He later served a second term beginning in 1983, when he was brought back after Anne Gorsuch and most of her senior staff resigned amid controversy.
The EPA has principal authority to implement the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (Superfund), the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, among others.
Starting in 2025, the Trump administration eliminated or paused a large portion of EPA environmental justice programs. More than 450 employees working on environmental justice and diversity programs were told they would be fired or reassigned. The Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights was shut down, most EJ grants were ended, and the EPA removed its EJScreen mapping tool from its public website in February 2025.
Superfund refers to the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, passed by Congress in 1980 following discoveries of contaminated sites like Love Canal. It enables the EPA to identify responsible parties for hazardous waste sites and fund assessment and cleanup. More than 1,700 sites had been placed on the cleanup list since the program's creation.
In 2015, the EPA discovered extensive violations by Volkswagen Group in the manufacture of Volkswagen and Audi diesel cars covering the 2009 through 2016 model years. Following notice of violations and potential criminal sanctions, Volkswagen agreed to a legal settlement, paid billions of dollars in criminal penalties, and was required to initiate a vehicle buyback program and modify the engines to reduce illegal air emissions.