President-elect Donald Trump has again confounded conventional wisdom in nominating former lawmaker and New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin to be the next head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This pick signals that Trump continues to value loyalty in choosing America’s next environmental leader.
The timing of the announcement is remarkable, coming less than a week after the election. In 2016, Trump did not nominate his EPA pick until Dec. 7. In 2020 President Joe Biden waited until Dec. 17 to announce his selection. The early announcement of Zeldin suggests that the president-elect’s team is more focused and organized compared with 2016 and reinforces the salience of the campaign’s attacks on the EPA. By quickly settling the question of who will lead the EPA, the incoming administration clearly hopes to get an early start on its agenda.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Zeldin’s legislative background might help smooth the path for his Senate confirmation. His legislative record appears to reflect that of many Republican members of Congress. Though he engaged in efforts to restore Long Island Sound, his votes in the House of Representatives generally did not support stronger environmental protection. Zeldin joined many Republicans in voting against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2022. As with all other Republicans, Zeldin voted against the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, which has already prompted more than $900 billion in domestic clean energy and manufacturing investments.
Much of the new Trump administration’s policy agenda for EPA is clear: rolling back carbon-reducing standards for automobiles, power plants, and oil and gas operations. Zeldin’s statements in accepting the president-elect’s nomination clearly reflect this deregulatory agenda.
Four things, however, are less clear.
The first is whether Zeldin, as a lawyer, will be able to assist the incoming administration in avoiding some of the legal errors that impeded the first Trump administration’s efforts to roll back regulatory initiatives from the Obama administration.
The second is whether, in taking on a deregulatory agenda, the new administrator will have the discretion to exercise independent judgment, as opposed to simply following the preferences of self-interested private businesses or wealthy donors.
The third is the full extent of the administration’s agenda. Not all environmental regulation involves energy and climate. The EPA is also responsible for overseeing standards for clean air, clean water, toxic chemical protection and cleanup of hazardous waste sites. Will deregulation lead to weakening these protective standards?
Finally, there have been attacks not just on EPA policy but on the career personnel of the agency itself. One of the president-elect’s former advisers was recorded saying, with specific reference to EPA, that it should be the administration’s agenda to “put them in trauma.” Other proposals have called for vast cuts to EPA’s budget or for EPA’s headquarters to be relocated to Florida or Texas.
Zeldin starts from a position that does not require him to be captive to this particular animus. The president-elect disavowed the notorious Project 2025 report, which went beyond policy to advocate many especially destructive administrative recommendations. Historically the most effective administrations, regardless of policy objectives, were ones in which political appointees were able to direct policies and enlist the aid of experienced career personnel in achieving them. The ability to distinguish between campaign rhetoric and the realities of governance has been a hallmark of successful EPA administrators. Some who have worked with Zeldin believe that he appreciates conservation-oriented concerns.
Elections have consequences, but few, including the president-elect, appear to want air that is not clean nor water that is not pure. Zeldin will be taking the helm of an agency that is protecting these resources and has done so in the past by following the law, following the science and being transparent. Everyone should hope that he, like many of his Republican and Democratic predecessors, will pursue these goals faithfully.
Stan Meiburg is executive director at The Sabin Center for the Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
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