As President Trump takes a sledgehammer to the Obama-Biden climate legacy, the politicized "science" that drove a key climate regulation is getting a second look.

As reported by Just the News, bombshell e-mails show that Obama's Environmental Protection Agency had a preconceived agenda when it published the landmark "endangerment finding."

The 2009 regulation, which is now on the chopping block under Trump, launched a new era of progressive policymaking as the government declared greenhouse gases a public health danger for the first time.

Politics behind key climate rule

Within a week of Obama's inauguration, EPA director Lisa Jackson - who went by the alias Richard Windsor in e-mails - held meetings with climate modelers and Georgetown law professor Lisa Heinzerling, who wrote the winning legal briefs in the Supreme Court case that declared greenhouse gases "air pollutants," Massachusetts v. EPA. The Supreme Court instructed the EPA to determine whether carbon emissions endanger public health and welfare.

In heavily redacted, early 2009 emails obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Obama's EPA officials used pseudonyms to discuss the endangerment finding months before it became policy. As the EPA's agenda became known to the press, Jackson's team began floating trial balloons to the public.

A heavily redacted email to Jackson at the time concerning media inquiries had the subject line, "opportunity to outline agenda; endangerment.” Jackson told the New York Times in February 2009 that a decision had not been made on the "momentous" question but said the agency was preparing a "road map."

Privately, the EPA seemed to have made up its mind. In a February 26 email, Heinzerling emailed Jackson and environmental lawyer David McIntosh with a timeline: the endangerment finding would be ready by August or September, and automobile regulations could be introduced even earlier.

"You are at the forefront of progressive national policy on one of the critical issues of our time. Do you realize that?” Heinzerling wrote Jackson on Feb. 27, 2009. “You’re a good boss. I do realize that. I pinch myself all the time.”

Trump kills "climate religion"

A linchpin of the Obama-Biden climate doctrine, the "endangerment finding" listed six greenhouse gases as public health dangers, empowering the EPA to impose new, sweeping regulations on the economy.

Under President Trump, the EPA is winding back what director Lee Zeldin calls the "climate change religion." Zeldin says the rollback of climate rules will save Americans "trillions" of dollars in regulatory costs and "hidden taxes" on basic essentials like heating and automobiles.

"After 16 years, EPA will formally reconsider the Endangerment Finding," Zeldin said in a statement on Wednesday. "The Trump Administration will not sacrifice national prosperity, energy security, and the freedom of our people for an agenda that throttles our industries, our mobility, and our consumer choice while benefiting adversaries overseas."

Steve Milloy, senior legal fellow with the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute and publisher of “JunkScience.com,” told Just The News that the Obama e-mails are good "background music" for conservatives but likely won't play a big role in the Trump administration's legal efforts. Still, he predicted the White House would prevail in front of the Supreme Court.

"As long as Zeldin dots all the I’s and crosses all the T’s, I think that'll survive at the Supreme Court level,” Milloy said.