As California Burns, Here’s What You Need to Know About Trump EPA Pick

Former NY congressman Lee Zeldin has a mixed record but is loyal to Trump.

Southern California is ablaze with devastating wildfires ripping through communities, destroying homes and lives. The fires have caused tens of millions of dollars in damage, displaced about 180,000 individuals, and killed at least five in the Los Angeles area. The largest, in the Pacific Palisades, has grown to nearly 20,000 acres.

Behind the conflagration, experts agree, is human-driven climate change, which fuels extreme weather. In California, a deadly combination of high winds and what the Association Press called “weather whiplash”—a period of heavy rainfall which saw significant plant growth followed by extreme drought—set the stage for the destruction currently unfolding.

What is happening in California is a sign of the times. Experts have been warning about the devolving climate crisis for decades, and humanity is fast approaching a tipping point. Without significant, coordinated government action and international cooperation, the crisis will inevitably get worse, affecting communities nationwide and billions of people around the world. The state of the crisis is a testament to the success of the fossil fuel industry and its allies in delaying action.

The incoming Trump administration among them has signaled that it intends to ignore and deny the crisis. Donald Trump has promised to roll back the Biden administration’s climate policies and to “drill, baby, drill.” The president-elect used the California fires as an opportunity to lambast the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, blaming his water and environmental policies rather than acknowledging the underlying cause.

There is perhaps no better indication of Trump’s climate intentions than his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Announced less than a week after the election, former New York congressman and 2022 gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin has not said anything on X (Twitter) about the fires. In fact, Zeldin’s only tweet about climate change is a post from March 2022 attacking two Democratic New York senators as “sick” for “comparing climate change to 9/11 to woo support for their far-left Green New Deal agenda.”

“There's NO comparison,” he wrote. “To think these are the people running the show with Hochul is all the more reason to TOSS THEM ALL OUT on Nov 8!”

In his announcement, the president-elect called Zeldin “a true fighter for America First policies” who will “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions.” In a post on X, the former congressman replied it would be an honor to join Trump’s cabinet, and added: “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.”

Unlike Trump’s first EPA pick, Scott Pruitt, who had a long history of suing the EPA during his time as Oklahoma’s attorney general, Zeldin is not known for his experience in climate and environmental policy. But he does have one attribute Trump looks for in his picks: loyalty.

Zeldin was one of the first Republicans to endorse Trump’s presidential candidacy in 2016, and he hasn’t left his side ever since. He served as part of the former president’s defense team during his first impeachment trial. He voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election and even texted the president’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with suggestions as to how to discredit them the day before the race was called for Joe Biden. On January 6, 2021, the day a mob of angry Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, he gave a speech stressing already debunked claims that poll watchers were denied access to vote-counting. Zeldin stuck with Trump despite his 88 indictments.

If he ascends to the top spot at the EPA, Zeldin, who voted to slash the agency’s budget by 25 percent in 2017 and has only ever managed a dozen people, will be responsible for its roughly $10 billion budget and its 15,000 employees—as well as the future of the nation’s climate policy. He has already pledged in a Fox News interview to roll back landmark climate regulations starting on day one—regulations that the president-elect has given him on a long list.

Breaking Bad

Zeldin has had friends in the fossil fuel industry for years, even if the industry has not always been able to rely on him. According to the watchdog group OpenSecrets, throughout his congressional career, oil and gas represented one of the top industries giving him money—though the contributions came from both political action committees and individuals. Zeldin received over $167,000 from PACs affiliated with the energy and natural resources sector. The PAC for Koch Industries, the petrochemical conglomerate owned by billionaire right-wing powerbroker Charles Koch, gave him $45,000 between the 2014 and 2020 election cycles.

Despite these ties, Zeldin has, on a number of occasions, voted in favor of environmentally friendly policies. As a state senator, before he was in the House, Zeldin supported renewable energy credit tracking. As a Congressman, he backed offshore wind, and when Trump wanted to expand offshore drilling on the east coast, he participated in a hearing with a number of concerned citizens and groups, ultimately voting in favor of a ban on such exploration.

Zeldin also backed measures to make coastal areas more resilient and voted for a bill to require the EPA to set limits on PFAS, known as “forever chemicals.” Despite supporting a cut to the agency’s funding in 2017, in 2021, Zeldin reversed course, voting against an appropriations act amendment to cut the EPA. He also voted against an amendment to a different appropriations bill that would have barred the agency from using money to go after greenhouse gas emissions.

But his overall record does reflect his alliances with the fossil fuel industry, including earning a 14 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters and reportedly voting against the environmental bills 85 percent of the time.

Even early on, there were indications that he would shift right on climate. In a 2014 interview, Zeldin said he was “not sold yet on the whole argument that we have a serious problem” concerning climate change. He served as a Congressman representing Long Island from 2015 to 2023—a time when the region was home to the state’s most contaminated drinking water and poorest air quality. Yet, he voted against clean water rules and voted multiple times to end Clean Air Act standards. Along with his 2017 vote to cut EPA funding, Zeldin voted against disaster relief funds for victims of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

The list of Zeldin’s anti-environment moves is long and includes setbacks to all his positive choices. For example, in 2020, on the very same day he voted for PFAS regulation, he also voted against closing a loophole in the Clean Water Act that, in practice, allowed companies to unload unlimited amounts of these chemicals in waterways. All told, Zeldin endorsed 17 bills that hindered the government's ability to inform the public about toxic chemical risks.

As a gubernatorial candidate, he positioned himself even more on the side of fossil fuel interests. He ran on overturning New York’s ban on hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, on the grounds that it would bring jobs. He called for the construction of new natural gas pipelines, opposed zero-emission requirements and efforts to transition away from gas stoves. He also vocally opposed congestion pricing. With the election around the corner, Zeldin—still in Congress—voted against Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which included historic funding for the fight against climate change.

Pathway to 2025

There are other reasons to be skeptical of Zeldin’s potential environmental stewardship as well. He joined the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a right-wing think tank founded in 2021 by senior advisors to Donald Trump with the goal of promoting his political agenda after he left the White House, including fracking billionaire Tim Dunn. In August 2023, Zeldin was named the group’s Chair of Pathway to 2025 initiative.

AFPI received Trump’s blessing from the get go. The group received $1 million in donations from his leadership PAC in 2021 alone. All three of its annual fund-raiser galas were hosted in Mar-a-Lago. While AFPI itself is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, its advocacy arm, America First Works, a 501(c)(4) organization, is engaged in partisan politics. These groups are well-funded, bringing in $23.6 million in revenue in 2022 alone. Neither discloses its donors.

During Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, AFPI became one of his primary partners. The group’s Pathway to 2025 initiative produced The America First Agenda policy document, which is a slimmer but equally conservative version of the notorious Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation. Ahead of the election, it had already prepared nearly 300 executive orders for Trump to sign, starting day one.

In one of its chapters, the document refers to the Paris Agreement as a “lop-sided, unenforceable, America-last international agreement,” and calls for the U.S. to rescind it—something Zeldin had already backed in a 2022 vote. The document also champions an increase in fossil fuel production by “removing undue regulatory constraints.”

Unlike its Heritage Foundation counterpart, which AFPI didn’t sign onto, Pathway to 2025 only released the outline of its plans. Given its more discrete approach, the document was never publicly rejected by the president-elect.

Mixed Reactions

News of Zeldin’s appointment drew mixed negative reactions from environmental advocates. Some were wary, noting his past support for environmental policies as well as his turn against them and loyalty to Trump.

Adrienne Esposito, the executive director of the Long Island-based Citizens Campaign for the Environment, whose group has had dealings with Zeldin, noted that “Whenever we met with Lee Zeldin on a critical environmental issue, he did respond positively.”

”I wouldn’t say he’s a climate change champion, but I certainly would say that he understands that it’s real, and it’s devastating, and it needs to be addressed,” Epsosito said. However, she did note that congressional representatives are accountable to the people in ways that the EPA administrator is not.

Other advocacy groups condemned the choice of Zeldin in no uncertain terms. The Sierra Club, for example, put out a statement titled, “Lee Zeldin Is an Unqualified, Anti-American Worker Nominee Who Will Sell Out Our Clean Air and Water.”

“Naming an unqualified, anti-American worker nominee who opposes efforts to safeguard our clean air and water lays bare Donald Trump’s intentions to, once again, sell our health, our communities, our jobs, and our future out to corporate polluters. Our lives, our livelihoods, and our collective future cannot afford Lee Zeldin – or anyone who seeks to carry out a mission antithetical to the EPA’s mission,” Sierra Club’s executive director Ben Jealous said in the statement.

Lori Lodes, the executive director of Climate Power put out her own statement.

“Big Oil spent millions of dollars propping up Donald Trump’s campaign—and he’s not wasting any time giving them a good return on their investment,” she said. “Lee Zeldin is already promising to slash critical protections as head of the EPA. During Donald Trump’s first term in office, he slashed over 125 environmental protections and let polluters off the hook for putting harmful chemicals into our air and water. Trump’s second term agenda will make our air and water dirtier just to make billionaires and big corporations richer—and Americans will pay the price.”