WASHINGTON – The following statement is from Ken Cook, president and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group:
The most important thing to know about Trump’s nominee for the EPA is not his name, or his record, or his views on any particular environmental issue. The most important thing to know is that his mandate from Trump is to destroy the EPA.
Lee Zeldin seems perfectly fine for the job.
In announcing the former congressman for the position, Trump promised “fair and swift deregulatory decisions” from an agency whose central duty is to regulate in the service of environmental protection and public health.
Zeldin’s lack of devotion to the Constitution and the rule of law and his servility to Trump are shown by his vote against the certification of President Joe Biden, in January 2021. His nomination is a bracing contrast with the instincts of the EPA’s first administrator, Republican William Ruckelshaus, who resigned in protest from his subsequent position at the Justice Department, alongside the attorney general, when then-President Richard Nixon sought to fire the special prosecutor investigating his Watergate crimes.
When January 2025 rolls around, Zeldin will have set his sights on the undoing of as many Biden EPA rules as possible. He will likely start with the unraveling of any and all regulations designed to combat climate change, delicacies of special appeal to Trump’s deregulatory appetites.
Biden-issued safeguards on toxic chemicals, pesticides and tap water contaminants, notably the recent legal limits on PFAS chemicals in tap water, will be neutered in short order.
As in Trump’s first term, each weakened or erased protection will be announced with own-the-libs cynicism as ensuring “the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet.”
But Zeldin’s success will not be measured by the regulatory rollbacks that will commence in January. That might have been adequate during Trump’s first term. But in Trump’s second term the EPA administrator will be judged by how expeditiously he dismantles his own agency’s ability to do its job in the long term.
Attacking the EPA has been an abiding, priority target for Republicans since the reign of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. They seek to fully replace what they see as a “deep state” that at least nominally serves at the public interest with one wholly devoted to the preferences of corporations.
The EPA will surely be the early focus of policies to hollow out the federal work force and put MAGA cadres in their place. The mere mention of moving EPA headquarters out of Washington will further inspire agency professionals to leave in droves, to the delight of regulated industries.
It is entirely plausible that a Trump trifecta government will make an emasculating dislocation of the EPA a reality, and soon. Even now, a small team inside the Trump transition team may be scouting locations in Texas for the agency’s next home.
As far as the Trump administration sees it, the job of the next EPA administrator is to fatally weaken the agency as a force for protecting America’s air, water, land, wildlife, climate and people from the depredations of oil companies, chemical and pesticide manufacturers, rapacious developers and polluters of every variety.
Nixon, who established the EPA by executive order, must be turning in his grave.