SOURCE:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/12/06/lee-zeldin-evolution-epa-trump/
By Maxine Joselow - December 6, 2024
When he served as a Republican congressman from New York, Lee Zeldin delighted environmentalists by championing efforts to protect critical wildlife habitat from potential development efforts, including a golf course proposed by Donald Trump.
Now, as Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Zeldin is pledging to deliver on the president-elect’s promise to eliminate several environmental regulations that the fossil fuel industry views as burdensome, according to half a dozen Senate Republicans who met with Zeldin this week.
The shift reflects Zeldin’s political evolution from a moderate who occasionally collaborated with conservationists to a MAGA loyalist. As Republican senators press him to overturn the Biden administration’s environmental policies, it offers clues to how Zeldin would approach an agency tasked with protecting the nation’s air, land, water and climate.
Zeldin lacks extensive experience in environmental policy, and he did not seek out the position of EPA administrator, according to two people familiar with the matter, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. Instead, Trump called Zeldin and asked him to implement his agenda at the agency, and Zeldin agreed, the two people said.
“The president-elect tapped someone who he believes will carry out what he wants at EPA,” said former congressman Thomas M. Reynolds (R-New York), a friend of Zeldin’s, adding that “Lee has been a guy who Trump knows not only because he was a New York congressman, but also because he was an aggressive supporter.”
Zeldin was one of the first Republicans to endorse Trump’s candidacy in 2016, joining his impeachment defense team and supporting Trump’s efforts to deny the results of the 2020 election. During the 2024 campaign, he appeared regularly at Mar-a-Lago and stumped for the former president in battleground states.
This week, Zeldin has held a flurry of meetings with Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which will vet his nomination. He has not yet met in person with any Senate Democrats, nor with top trade groups in the industries that the EPA regulates, including the chemicals and oil sectors.
The former chief of staff to Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia), Joel Brubaker, is guiding Zeldin through his confirmation process, according to two people familiar with the matter. In an interview, Capito said she and Zeldin have discussed scrapping President Joe Biden’s sweeping environmental rules for coal- and gas-fired power plants.
“We got into that and how we could dismantle some of that,” Capito said. “Because of the overreach, some of them may have to be refashioned.”
Sen. John Hoeven (R-North Dakota) said he spoke with Zeldin on Wednesday about “cutting the regulatory burden.” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) said they discussed the Biden administration’s “hostility towards oil, gas and coal.” And Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Nebraska) said they focused on “the need for an EPA that unleashes American energy, instead of attacking it.”
Many Senate Democrats said they had not requested meetings with Zeldin and had no plans to do so. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island), who could become the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee next year, said he didn’t see much point in talking to the Trump loyalist.
“It does seem that Trump is selecting for the absence of an independent streak in his nominees,” Whitehouse said. “I don’t know what conversations he’s had with Trump or the Trump team about the extent he’ll do exactly as told.”
Asked for comment, Trump transition spokeswoman Liz Huston said in a statement: “With Lee Zeldin — and his experience of securing economic and environmental wins throughout nearly a decade in Congress — as head of the EPA, we will ensure that the American economy can continue to grow while we maintain the highest environmental standards on the planet.”
Zeldin’s recent statements contrast with some of his comments as a congressman, when he vowed to protect Plum Island — a roughly 840-acre island in Long Island Sound that is home to 111 vulnerable species — from developers eager to build on the land. Chief among those developers was Trump, who had spoken with local and federal officials about the possibility of purchasing the island and constructing a golf course there.
“Blessed with the natural beauty of Long Island, we must always be committed to protecting and preserving the abundance of our natural resources that are so important to our life, culture and economy,” Zeldin wrote in a 2016 opinion piece in Long Island Business News. Without mentioning Trump, he added, “I know that we can stop the sale of Plum Island and preserve it for future generations.”
During his tenure in the House from 2015 to 2023, Zeldin joined the House Climate Solutions Caucus, a group of Republican lawmakers that argues the GOP should play a greater role in climate policy debates in Washington. Former congressman Carlos Curbelo (R-Florida), who founded what is now called the Conservative Climate Caucus, said Zeldin was a valuable addition.
“I wouldn’t say he was one of the most involved members, but he knew the topic of environmental protection was important to his district, and he sought out some opportunities to be constructive and collaborative,” Curbelo said. Asked about Zeldin’s apparent shift to the right, he added, “Almost every Republican has evolved under the Trump era, and I don’t think he’s an exception.”
While Zeldin sometimes sided with local environmentalists while serving in Congress, he often opposed them on the national level. He received a 14 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters for his votes against numerous environmental bills, including a measure that would have closed a loophole in the Clean Water Act that allowed companies to discharge unlimited “forever chemicals,” also known as PFAS, into waterways nationwide.
But Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, a New York-based environmental group, said Zeldin was willing to buck Trump’s proposal to open up the East Coast to offshore oil drilling. When the Interior Department unveiled the proposal, Esposito said, she called Zeldin and explained that an offshore oil spill would devastate the tourism industry, a crucial engine of the economy in coastal Suffolk County.
He agreed.
“He didn’t have to fight against offshore drilling or developing Plum Island, but he really did,” Esposito said. “And once he did something, he really did it. He didn’t just give us lip service.”
Like many GOP lawmakers from New York’s Suffolk County, Zeldin once took more moderate stances on a range of policy questions. His political evolution has taken years to play out, and his tack to the right was on full display during his failed bid for governor in 2022. On the campaign trail, he blasted Democratic rival Kathy Hochul’s climate policies as “out of touch,” and he called for reversing a ban on fracking in New York.
Since leaving Congress, he has not remained close to his onetime allies at New York-based environmental groups, who are scrambling to figure out his plans for the EPA.
“I’m waiting to see how independent he is versus how much he is carrying out a Donald Trump agenda. And we just don’t know the answer to that yet,” said Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters.
Zeldin has never managed a bigger team than a 12-person congressional staff. He has sought to have the former chief of staff in his congressional office, Eric Amidon, serve in a senior advisory role at the EPA, according to two people familiar with the matter. Amidon has accompanied his former boss to meetings on Capitol Hill this week.
Zeldin’s lack of environmental experience contrasts with the records of Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler, who both served as EPA administrator during Trump’s first term. Before coming to Washington, Pruitt was Oklahoma attorney general, suing the EPA more than a dozen times.
Wheeler worked as a lobbyist for the coal industry and other energy interests, and served as staff director on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
In a brief interview Wednesday, Zeldin said he spent his Thanksgiving break getting up to speed on environmental policy, including by watching five hours’ worth of Pruitt’s and Wheeler’s testimony during their own confirmation hearings and reading relevant documents.
“There’s no better way to spend Thanksgiving than rereading Supreme Court cases, op-eds, law review articles and press releases,” Zeldin said on his way to a meeting in the Russell Senate Office Building.
