Trump Chooses Lee Zeldin to Run EPA - MIRATECH
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Trump Chooses Lee Zeldin to Run EPA

November 18, 2024

President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Monday, Nov. 11 that he would nominate former Representative Lee Zeldin, Republican of New York, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a Nov. 11 article from The New York Times.

Mr. Trump campaigned on pledges to “kill” and “cancel” E.P.A. rules and regulations to combat global warming by restricting fossil fuel pollution from vehicle tailpipes, power plant smokestacks and oil and gas wells.

In particular, Mr. Trump wants to erase the Biden administration’s most significant climate rule, which is designed to speed a transition away from gasoline-powered cars and toward electric vehicles.

A former congressman from Long Island who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022, Mr. Zeldin, 44, is an avid Trump supporter.

“It is an honor to join President Trump’s Cabinet as EPA Administrator,” Mr. Zeldin wrote on X. “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

In a statement, Mr. Trump said Mr. Zeldin would “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet.”

Mr. Trump added that Mr. Zeldin would “set new standards on environmental review and maintenance that will allow the United States to grow in a healthy and well-structured way.”

Perhaps more than many other federal agencies, the E.P.A. has been a particular target for Mr. Trump, who blames environmental regulations for hampering a variety of industries, including construction and oil and gas drilling. During his first term, Mr. Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental policies and regulations. President Biden restored many of them and strengthened several.

Some people on Mr. Trump’s transition team say the agency needs a wholesale makeover and are even discussing moving the E.P.A. headquarters and its 7,000 workers out of Washington, D.C., according to multiple people involved in the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the transition.

Michael McKenna, who worked in the first Trump administration on energy issues, said that as two New Yorkers, Mr. Trump and Mr. Zeldin “speak the same language.” He also said Mr. Zeldin’s experience as an Army reservist would make him adept at navigating bureaucracies.

Others, including some close to the Trump transition team, were baffled by the choice. Mr. Zeldin has not been known for showing a particular interest in the E.P.A. And Mr. Trump has tended to select agency heads from regulated industries; he put Andrew Wheeler, a coal lobbyist, in charge of the E.P.A. during his first term.

Mr. Zeldin’s record on climate policy appears to be mixed, especially during his years representing a swath of the East End of Long Island that includes hundreds of miles of coastline and a bipartisan tradition of environmental conservation.

He was a member of the House’s Bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus and earned a 14 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental group. It is a low mark from the environmental advocacy group, but it was nevertheless higher than nearly any other Republican.

Tiernan Sittenfeld, the senior vice president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters, wrote in an email that Mr. Zeldin’s score “is obviously not what you would hope to see from the person who could be in charge of protecting the air we breathe, the water we drink and combating the climate crisis.”

Although he boasted about securing federal funds for the E.P.A.’s Long Island Sound program, Mr. Zeldin voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, the 2022 climate law that has pumped at least $370 billion into clean energy and electric vehicles.

During Mr. Zeldin’s tenure in the House, he voted against clean water legislation at least a dozen times, and clean air legislation at least half a dozen times, according to the League of Conservation Voters scorecard.

His record includes a vote against an amendment to a defense bill that would have created a climate resilience office inside the White House; for legislation that would have withdrawn the United States from the treaty enabling global climate negotiations; and for an amendment that would have blocked the federal government from considering the economic damage of climate change when it makes policies.

Mr. Zeldin has also taken some votes that the group supported, including prohibiting oil and gas drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. He also voted in favor of a landmark conservation bill that passed with bipartisan support and was signed by Mr. Trump. It guarantees maximum annual funding for a federal program to acquire and preserve land for public use.

He voted for a bill that would require the E.P.A. to set limits on PFAS, which are a family of man-made chemicals that are persistent in the environment and the human body. The E.P.A. under the Biden administration has set strict limits on the chemicals in drinking water. In 2020, he voted against legislation that would have slashed E.P.A.’s budget.