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Under Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, Maryland has petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency for help bringing ozone pollution in the state to a safe level. Granting this request should be a no-brainer for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.

It’s already been almost 17 years since the EPA first concluded that it should issue a rule limiting mercury emissions from coal- and oil-fired power plants. It’s been more than five years since the agency actually did issue such a rule. And it’s been more than two years since the nation’s power plants started complying with the rule. All along the way, the EPA, states, power companies, and public health and environmental groups have been fighting about the rule in court. They show no signs of stopping anytime soon.

It’s no secret that the Trump administration would like to undo as much of Obama’s environmental legacy as possible by rescinding or repealing regulations. Under the law, that process is difficult, but Trump’s agency heads now seem to be looking for an easy way to undo rules without officially rescinding or repealing them.

Pruitt is in no position to declare victory and merely preserve the status quo. Large swaths of the country are violating the air and water standards that both Republican and Democratic administrations have agreed were necessary to protect public health.

Last month, I explained that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s handling of the case would test the sincerity of his recent pledges to prioritize air quality, even as he works to unwind EPA restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. Well, test day arrived, and Pruitt failed miserably. It seems that the new administrator’s only real priority is rolling back regulatory protections, regardless of which type of pollution they address.

Speaking with Knowledge@Wharton, Denise Grab pointed out that the specific language of the order doesn’t remove requirements for federal agencies to meet their duties under regulations such as the Clean Air Act. “The executive order itself is a lot of sound and fury signifying not much on its own,” she said. “Whether it will result in substantive changes does remain to be seen.”

Mere hours after the signing ceremony for Trump’s executive order, EPA filed a motion in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking the court to put a pending case about the Clean Power Plan on indefinite hold. The court should say no.

Pruitt’s right that ozone is a serious problem. But he failed to mention that the EPA already issued a major new limit on ozone pollution back in 2015, when Pruitt was still serving as Oklahoma’s attorney general. Pruitt also left out the part where, rather than praising that new ozone rule, he sued to block it.

In his Tuesday night speech, President Donald Trump made reference to regulations that have killed American jobs. But, at least in the case of the environmental regulations Trump is specifically attacking, it isn’t true. And in timely fashion, the Institute for Policy Integrity has a new brief with a clear and succinct explanation why this is so.

President Donald Trump and newly confirmed EPA administrator Scott Pruitt appear poised to make sweeping environmental policy changes. But strong environmental regulations remain widely popular. Perhaps as a result, the Trump administration may take a subtle approach in attacking environmental rules. Pruitt and other administration officials appear interested in rewriting guidelines for regulatory analysis and they could cook the books so that environmental protections appear to have few or no benefits and exaggerated costs. The results would be sinister, undermining many current and future safeguards for the environment, workplace safety and other important social issues.