The Senate voted Wednesday to verify Lee Zeldin because the nation’s seventeenth administrator of the Environmental Safety Company.
Three Democrats ― Sens. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) ― joined all 53 Republicans to approve the previous congressman from Lengthy Island, New York, as the highest environmental regulator of a rustic going through cascading ecological and public well being crises, from worsening air air pollution, mounting disasters fueled by rising international temperatures, and a rising quantity of plant and animal species going extinct. Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) abstained from voting.
Zeldin, 44, was broadly seen as one in every of President Donald Trump’s extra reasonable Cupboard nominees and represented a departure from Trump’s picks to steer the EPA throughout his first time period in workplace.
In 2017, Trump positioned Scott Pruitt, a former Oklahoma lawyer basic who had led a lawsuit on the Supreme Courtroom towards Obama-era energy plant laws, on the helm of the EPA. The religious evangelical Christian, who cited theological arguments to problem fundamental scientific strategies at an company tasked with finishing up crucial analysis and who had restricted political expertise exterior his residence state, grew to become a lightning rod within the first Trump administration.
By the point Pruitt resigned in July 2018, he confronted an avalanche of ethics scandals that alienated even Trump’s fervent allies in Congress. The deputy administrator Trump promoted to the highest job, Andrew Wheeler, was a former coal lobbyist who known as on his previous expertise as a Senate aide to push by the president’s deregulatory agenda. Slightly than questioning the fundamental realities of local weather change, Wheeler enacted new, weaker energy plant guidelines that eased restrictions on coal- and gas-fired producing stations with out working afoul of the EPA’s long-settled requirement to manage planet-heating gases beneath the Clear Air Act.
Very similar to the Obama-era laws Wheeler managed to switch, the foundations by no means took impact. Former President Joe Biden rescinded the regulation and proposed new, stricter guidelines designed to keep away from the authorized entice that ensnared the Obama administration’s so-called Clear Energy Plan.
Zeldin, a largely secular Jew born and raised on the Acela hall within the New York Metropolis suburbs, acknowledged the fact of local weather change at his Senate affirmation listening to and promised to take care of independence from the fossil gasoline business if confirmed. He served three phrases within the U.S. Home of Representatives earlier than managing to attraction to sufficient Democrats in his deep-blue residence state to run a surprisingly aggressive race for New York governor in 2022.
In Congress, nevertheless, Zeldin repeatedly voted to chop funding to the company he’s now looking for to steer. The nation’s largest environmental teams opposed his nomination, however he gained the endorsement of Mandy Gunasekara, a controversial former EPA official from Trump’s first time period who authored a key part on the company within the Heritage Basis’s Venture 2025 plan.
“Administrator Lee Zeldin has a proven track record of finding solutions to the nation’s most pressing energy challenges,” mentioned Mike Sommers, the chief govt of the American Petroleum Institute, the main U.S. oil and gasoline foyer. “We look forward to working with him to advance American energy leadership, from developing smart, effective regulations to ensuring consumers — not the government — can choose the vehicles they drive.”
Zeldin vowed to advance Trump’s deregulatory agenda and blamed the Biden-era EPA at his Senate listening to for inflaming the nation’s cost-of-living disaster.
“We can, and we must, protect our precious environment without suffocating the economy,” he mentioned. “A big part of this will require building private sector collaboration to promote common-sense, smart regulation that will allow American innovation to continue to lead the world.”
Zeldin acknowledged the EPA’s authority to restrict greenhouse gases beneath the Endangerment Discovering, a authorized commonplace the company adopted after the Supreme Courtroom dominated in 2007 that planet-heating gases posed a danger to public well being and due to this fact merited laws beneath the Clear Air Act. Nevertheless it’s unclear how a lot affect the Trump loyalist may have on his boss.
Tom Williams by way of Getty Photos
In a flurry of govt orders on his first day again in workplace, Trump directed the EPA to look into methods to object to the discovering.
Evergreen Motion, a local weather coverage group fashioned by former Democratic staffers, known as Zeldin a “Trump loyalist” bent on advancing an “agenda of environmental destruction.”
“Just days after Trump’s brazen attempt to block funding that Americans rely on, it is deeply disappointing that some Senate Democrats failed to stand against Zeldin’s nomination,” Lena Moffitt, the manager director of Evergreen Motion, mentioned in an announcement. “The American people deserve an EPA Administrator who will fight for their health and safety — not a yes-man who will look the other way while Trump breaks the law to serve his billionaire donors and polluter allies.”
The Pure Assets Protection Council, the environmental group that boasted of submitting greater than 100 lawsuits towards the primary Trump administration, expressed cautious optimism that Zeldin may mood extra radical components within the White Home.
“While President-elect Trump has trafficked in climate denial, today Lee Zeldin accepted the scientific consensus on the causes and reality of climate change and said that the EPA has the legal authority to treat greenhouse gases as a pollutant,” Manish Bapna, the president of the Pure Assets Protection Council, mentioned in an announcement after Zeldin’s preliminary affirmation listening to. “This is a crucial start, but only a start.”
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Regardless of his distinction in character and politics from Pruitt, Zeldin may face related scrutiny of his private ethics and funds.
This month, Business Insider reported that the previous congressman earned $120,500 from unnamed shoppers writing op-eds and giving speeches. Monetary disclosures confirmed Zeldin obtained consulting funds from a Qatari businessman linked to the felony corruption case towards former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.). At his affirmation listening to, Democrats pressed Zeldin on previous marketing campaign donations he had obtained from the fossil gasoline business.
“There’s no donation that anyone has ever provided me at any point, of any amount, that is going to influence any decision that I make in this position, or beyond,” Zeldin mentioned.
