EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin attends a Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission Event in the East Room of the White House on May 22 in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, file)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday proposed revoking a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule would rescind a 2009 declaration that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. The “endangerment finding” is the legal underpinning of a host of climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet.

Repealing the finding “will be the largest deregulatory action in the history of America,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said Tuesday.

“There are people who, in the name of climate change, are willing to bankrupt the country,” Zeldin said on the conservative “Ruthless” podcast. “They created this endangerment finding and then they are able to put all these regulations on vehicles, on airplanes, on stationary sources, to basically regulate out of existence, in many cases, a lot of segments of our economy. And it cost Americans a lot of money.”

The EPA proposal must go though a lengthy review process, including public comment, before it is finalized, likely next year. Environmental groups are likely to challenge the rule change in court.

Zeldin called for a rewrite of the endangerment finding in March as part of a series of environmental rollbacks announced at the same time in what he said was “the greatest day of deregulation in American history.” A total of 31 key environmental rules on topics from clean air to clean water and climate change would be rolled back or repealed under Zeldin’s plan.

Under the Obama and Biden administrations, his predecessors at EPA “twisted the law, ignored precedent and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year,” Zeldin said Tuesday at an event in Indiana announcing the proposed rule change.