President-elect Donald Trump on Monday said he plans to nominate former Rep. Lee Zeldin, Republican from New York, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, a federal department crucial to California’s climate goals.
Zeldin, 44, is a loyal Trump supporter. He left Congress in 2023 and was among the Republicans in Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 election results.
Trump, in a statement, said Zeldin would “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet.”
Although California is the only state in the nation that has been granted authority to set its own vehicle emission standards, the EPA must still approve waivers to make the rules effective.
Currently, eight California clean air rules await EPA waivers, including one that would ban the sale of new, gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
In a failed bid to be New York’s governor in 2022, Zeldin vowed to reverse a fracking ban imposed by Democrats.
“It is an honor to join President Trump’s Cabinet as EPA Administrator,” Zeldin said in a post on X. “We will restore U.S. energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the U.S. the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”
The reaction from environmentalists was mixed.
“I think Zeldin will just be a purist and is not interested, and really has no background, on the environmental side of the ledger,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director of the Center for Biological Diversity.
“When it comes to cars in particular, that’s an area where California is particularly leading the way,” Hartl said. “And obviously Trump will be trying to undo those efforts.”
Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the group plans to hold Zeldin to account “to protect clean air and water and public health.”
Bapna pointed to Zeldin’s comment that he wanted to make the nation a leader in AI, a technology that requires giant datacenters that use extraordinary amounts of electricity.
“We can meet demand for data centers without scrapping EPA rules to clean up dirty power plants and cut climate pollution,” Bapna said.
Laura Deehan, state director of Environment California, noted that Zeldin had taken some actions to protect the environment in the past.
“When Lee Zeldin was in Congress he opposed dumping toxic waste into the Long Island Sound, took action to protect Americans from forever chemicals, and supported permanent conservation funding in the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act, which is protecting and updating beautiful parks and green spaces around the country,” she said in a statement.
“As EPA Administrator, I hope he would take more action to protect our health and our environment,” Deehan said.
David Watkins, director of government affairs for the Union of Concerned Scientists’s climate and energy program, said Zeldin was a somewhat surprising choice for Trump in that while in Congress, he decided to participate in a House bipartisan climate caucus.
Zeldin represented “an area in Long Island New York that has seen firsthand the devastating impacts of the kind of extreme weather that is being made worse by climate change,” Watkins said, in particular the costly damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
“We are hopeful about this selection, but we’re also pretty realistic about it,” Watkins said.
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly professed his love of clean air and water, but he has also criticized some of the environmental regulations that seek to protect California rivers and estuaries.
The Republican-held Senate must approve the nomination.
“Republicans of all stripes, including former Congressman Zeldin and former President Trump, have always claimed that they believe in and support states’ rights and the ability of states to exercise authority. And I hope that they stick to that in the case of California and what California is trying to do to combat the climate crisis,” Watkins said.
Times staff writer Susanne Rust and Michelle Price of the Associated Press contributed to this report.
