President Donald Trump singled out Vermont and New York state’s climate superfund laws in an executive order signed late Tuesday aimed at gutting them.

He called for U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to “expeditiously” identify ways to halt the enforcement of laws, such as the climate superfunds, that he said have threatened “American energy dominance.” 

Though Trump specifically names Vermont’s and New York’s superfund laws, alongside California’s carbon cap-and-trade policy, the order gives leeway for Bondi to address other state laws that collect carbon penalties or carbon taxes or otherwise address climate change. 

The order gives Bondi 60 days to submit a report recommending action needed to block such laws.

Vermont officials don’t plan to change any of Vermont’s climate initiatives based on the order, as several told VTDigger.

The order doesn’t block the law’s ability to move forward, explained Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark, so the offices tasked with implementing the climate superfund and other climate initiatives can proceed.

“This executive order doesn’t do anything,” she said, explaining that as it stands, the order is basically an internal email, asking a member of his administration to file a report, dressed up as an executive action. 

“I think Donald Trump wants to have more power than he really has. And so he’s styling these memos and emails as executive orders,” she said.

The climate superfund law Trump targeted in the order, Act 122, takes the polluters-pay framework from the federal hazardous waste Superfund and applies it to the costs of climate damages, like flood recovery or harm from extreme heat. When it was passed in 2024, it was the first law in the nation to adopt this framework. It tasks the state treasurer and Agency of Natural Resources with calculating the total costs of climate-caused damages to Vermont and the responsible parties. 

The offices plan to continue that work, said Julie Moore, secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources. 

“I feel strongly that our job is to continue to move forward with the directives that have been provided at the state level until we are specifically and officially told to stop, and we’re not at that point yet,” Moore said.

Because so many of the Trump administration’s orders have been halted by courts, the need to continue the work as planned is crucial, she added. 

“We are not reacting to every action, because we would spend, frankly, all of our time reacting and then not have any capacity to do the work,” Moore said

Clark said that once there is an “actionable claim,” her office will be ready to respond, but for now, there is no claim to act upon. 

Conservation Law Foundation President Brad Campbell called the order “a screed devoid of legal argument” in a statement.

The executive order uses language similar to a lawsuit that the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed against Vermont’s law in December.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs argue that the federal Clean Air Act preempts Vermont’s law. They posit that the Clean Air Act already gives the federal Environmental Protection Agency jurisdiction over regulating greenhouse gas emissions, not just air pollution. 

Similarly, Trump’s order calls on the U.S. attorney general to identify any state law “burdening” domestic energy production that “may be” unconstitutional or preempted by federal law, such as the Clean Air Act.  

But, as for actual arguments, the order itself “doesn’t spell out anything,” said Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor at Vermont Law School’s Environmental Law Center and a former attorney for the federal Environmental Protection Agency who specialized in superfunds.

Parenteau said it’s likely the Trump administration would join the existing lawsuit against the state law or file an amicus brief in support of the oil industry’s argument. 

“Vermont better be damn sure it has the money and the manpower to defend itself, because they’re coming. They’re coming for (Vermont) and bringing all of the pressure to bear,” he said. “The Legislature better be ready to cut some serious money for that.”

Last week, Moore and others from the Agency of Natural Resources joined representatives from the Treasurer’s Office to ask the Legislature for additional funding to complete the reports required by the climate superfund law. They noted that the lawsuits demand an even higher level of expertise from attorneys and climate scientists, who will now need to be prepared to testify in court. Now, federal pressure is only increasing that need for expertise, and the associated expense, she said. 

“I think it buttresses the need for legal resources to defend the work,” Moore said. “Regardless of the outcome, every one of these (actions) takes time and effort to track and for us to continue to assess.”

Like the tobacco industry before it, Parenteau said, the fossil fuel industry’s approach to these lawsuits is to bleed its opponents dry in long legal battles. The costs — of depositions for federal and state courts, of contracting specialized, “high-powered” lawyers and of hiring expert witnesses who testify in court to explain the scientific link between climate damage in Vermont and emissions — are going to “add up exponentially,” he said. 

The order only heightens the scrutiny Vermont’s superfund law already faced from the oil industry, Parenteau said.

“The stakes were already high,” he said, “but now, boy oh boy, gird yourself.”