Another signal of declining enforcement: Through September of last year, the EPA issued $41 million in penalties—$8 million less than the same period in the first year of the Biden administration, after adjusting for inflation. This suggests “the Trump Administration may be letting more polluters get by with a slap on the wrist when the Administration does take enforcement action,” the report reads.

Combined, the lack of lawsuits, penalties, and other enforcement actions for environmental violations could impact communities across the country, said Erika Kranz, a senior staff attorney in the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School, who was not involved in the report.

“We’ve been seeing the administration deregulate by repealing rules and extending compliance deadlines, and this decline in enforcement action seems like yet another mechanism that the administration is using to de-emphasize environmental and public health protections,” Kranz said. “It all appears to be connected, and if you’re a person in the US who is worried about your health and the health of your neighbors generally, this certainly could have effects.”

The report notes that many court cases last longer than a year, so it will take time to get a clearer sense of how environmental enforcement is changing under the Trump administration. However, the early data compiled by the Environmental Integrity Project and other nonprofits shows a clear and steep shift away from legal actions against polluters.

Historically, administrations have a “lot of leeway on making enforcement decisions,” Kranz said. But this stark of a drop could prompt lawsuits against the Trump administration, she added.

“Given these big changes and trends, you might see groups arguing that this is more than just an exercise of discretion or choosing priorities [and] this is more of an abdication of an agency’s core mission and its statutory duties,” Kranz said. “I think it’s going to be interesting to see if groups make those arguments, and if they do, how courts look at them.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.