# Lee Zeldin Administrator of the [[EPA]] since January 2025, confirmed **56–42** on January 29, 2025, with three Democrats (Fetterman, Kelly and Gallego) voting yes. Of the second-term officials running an agency, he has done the most to take one apart by rule. He was still in the job in September 2026, after being reported in April 2026 as a possible replacement for Attorney General [[Pam Bondi]] ([[Department of Justice]]). ## Before the EPA Zeldin served on active duty in the Army from 2003 to 2007 and then in the Reserve, where he rose to lieutenant colonel. He was a New York state senator from 2011 to 2014 and represented New York's 1st District in the House from 2015 to 2023. He was one of Trump's reliable defenders in the first impeachment and voted to object to certifying the 2020 electoral votes. In 2022 he beat [[Andrew Giuliani]] for the gubernatorial nomination and lost to [[Kathy Hochul]] 53.2–46.8, the best Republican result in the state in twenty years. He had no environmental background. His qualification, as his supporters describe it, was loyalty and a willingness to cut. ## The record - **March 12, 2025: "the largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. history."** Zeldin announced 31 reconsiderations at once, covering power-plant and vehicle emissions, soot standards, water-pollution rules and chemical restrictions. He called climate policy a "religion." - **The Endangerment Finding.** The 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health is the legal basis for federal climate regulation under the [[Clean Air Act]]. EPA proposed repealing it in July 2025 and **finalized the repeal on February 12, 2026**. Zeldin called it "the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States." It is under challenge in court, and it rests on reading the statute against the Supreme Court's 2007 *Massachusetts v. EPA* ([[Energy Sector]], [[Climate Change]]). - **Water.** The WOTUS rewrite narrows which wetlands and streams the [[Clean Water Act]] covers, pushing the post-*Sackett* definition as far as the agency can take it. Zeldin's stated goal was "a durable WOTUS definition that follows the law." - **The agency itself.** EPA announced in July 2025 that it would close the Office of Research and Development, its science arm. The budget request proposed cutting the agency by about 65%. EPA granted compliance exemptions to roughly 70 coal plants in the first months of the term. Environmental-justice offices were shut and their screening tools defunded ([[Environmental Racism]]). - **Personnel.** Senior EPA posts were filled with former industry lobbyists and lawyers. It is the regulated-becomes-regulator pattern the vault tracks across the [[Energy Sector]], alongside [[Chris Wright]] at Energy and [[Doug Burgum]] at Interior. ## Why he matters here The EPA shows how the [[Project 2025]] method works in practice. Apart from the Congressional Review Act votes against California's vehicle waivers, almost nothing was repealed by statute. The deregulation runs through rulemaking, grant terminations, reorganization and budget. That makes it fast, and it also makes it reversible by a future administration, except where the courts adopt the underlying legal theory. The endangerment repeal is the one move built to outlast him: if a court upholds it, the ground for federal climate regulation is gone whoever runs the EPA next. ## See also - [[EPA]] · [[Clean Air Act]] · [[Clean Water Act]] · [[Climate Change]] · [[Environmental Racism]] - [[Energy Sector]] · [[Chris Wright]] · [[Doug Burgum]] · [[Project 2025]] - [[Trump 2.0 Cabinet Hub]] · [[Second Trump Administration]] · [[Loper Bright v. Raimondo]] - [[PFAS and Forever Chemicals]] — persistent contamination and the regulatory fight over drinking-water limits