Moms Clean Air Force is activating its million-plus members in a bid to oust Administrator Lee Zeldin from EPA.
Disappointed by regulatory rollback after rollback under the Trump administration, the environmental organization will mount a high-profile effort to spotlight the former New York congressman’s track record running the agency.
The multifront campaign revs up Monday with grassroots pressure, social media and paid digital ads to highlight the environmental and public health risks that it says have been spawned under Zeldin’s tenure at EPA.
The administrator has said EPA will still make environmental gains under President Donald Trump despite the historic deregulatory push.
Dominique Browning, co-founder and director of Moms Clean Air Force, however, believes Zeldin has only given free license to polluters to pollute even more.
“We want him to resign because he has thoroughly corrupted the mission of EPA,” Browning said in an interview with POLITICO’s E&E News, noting “the cumulative impact is absolutely crushing, the amount of pollution that will be released.”
She continued, “What he’s allowing polluters to do is just unheard of. Never before has an EPA behaved this way.”
Asked for comment, the agency defended its work during the Trump administration and said Moms Clean Air Force was pursuing the agenda of its affiliate, the Environmental Defense Fund.
“Let’s be absolutely clear, the deliberate spread of misinformation stops now,” EPA spokesperson Brigit Hirsch said. “They are clearly not representing moms but the political agenda of groups like EDF that peddle false narratives to advance their own agendas.”
At Moms Clean Air Force, frustration with Zeldin has been building over the past year. The group has petitioned EPA to keep strong protections on air and climate pollution as well as chemical releases, while Browning has written op-eds decrying Zeldin’s actions for Newsday, the administrator’s hometown Long Island, New York, newspaper.
Browning listed Zeldin’s push to end the endangerment finding on greenhouse gases, the foundation of EPA’s climate rules, and rollbacks that will lead to more toxic mercury emissions as well as air pollution from tailpipes and plastic facilities.
Then, right before the Thanksgiving holiday, the agency decided to no longer defend stricter limits on soot and finalized a delay in implementing the oil and gas industry’s controls on methane emissions.
Citing the delay on methane, Browning recalled a colleague’s son who survived childhood leukemia. They live in western Pennsylvania, close to several fracking sites, where cancer-causing chemicals are prevalent.
“I just had one of those moments of feeling like this is so cruel, like people have to sit down for Thanksgiving dinner and think, ‘Oh, now my son will be even more exposed,’ and we can multiply that times millions around the country,” Browning said.
The group sent a letter Monday to Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Environment and Public Works and House Energy and Commerce committees urging them to hold hearings on Zeldin’s tenure at EPA.
Citing a series of rollbacks, the letter said, “It’s hard to see how this EPA-sanctioned pollution spree protects human health or the environment.“
“Administrator Zeldin has violated the trust placed in him by Congress and the American people,” the letter continued. “We urge you to exercise your oversight authority to hold Administrator Zeldin accountable and ensure that EPA is fulfilling its core mission.”
On Monday, Moms Clean Air Force will start emailing its more than 1.6 million members, telling them Zeldin must go and asking them to sign a petition to press lawmakers.
The group will also run paid ads on Facebook and Instagram as well as launch a social media campaign, including a video of mothers demanding the administrator step down at EPA.
‘Superstar’ or ‘illegal leadership’?
Despite the pushback, Trump has praised the EPA administrator for moving quickly on his deregulatory agenda and fossil fuel project permits.
“Lee Zeldin, one of the superstars of this administration. I said, ‘Lee, if it’s oil and gas, get them approved in two weeks,’” the president said last month.
Zeldin also has backing from GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who control both chambers of Congress.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), chair of the EPW Committee, “strongly supports Administrator Zeldin’s leadership and President Trump’s policies that he is advancing at EPA,” a spokesperson from the panel’s majority staff told POLITICO’s E&E News.
The spokesperson added, “She will continue to stand with the administration in advancing commonsense policies that protect our environment and allow for economic growth.”
Capito accompanied Zeldin on a visit to West Virginia last month where he stopped by auto manufacturing, power and steel plants in the state.
Hirsch, the agency spokesperson, said, “Every decision under this administration is grounded in rigorous, transparent, gold standard science, not political theater or manufactured outrage.
“The Trump EPA is delivering results while critics peddle fiction. We are simultaneously protecting human health, safeguarding the environment, and driving economic growth,” Hirsch added. “We will continue to expose these bad-faith attacks with facts, data, and results.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are critical of Zeldin’s tenure.
“Under Administrator Zeldin, the EPA has become the Polluter Protection Agency,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), ranking member of the EPW Committee, in a statement. “Big Oil tycoons will get even richer while Americans’ health suffers, pollution increases, and electricity, property insurance, and grocery costs skyrocket.”
In addition, a spokesperson for the House Energy and Commerce Democrats said ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) has demanded accountability for Zeldin’s “dangerous and often illegal leadership at EPA.”
Further, part of Trump’s winning electoral coalition is displeased with the EPA administrator. Activists with the “Make America Healthy Again” movement are circulating a petition for the president to remove Zeldin because he has rolled back safeguards for dangerous “forever chemicals,” known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, The New York Times reported Friday.
Nevertheless, the Moms Clean Air Force leader acknowledged Zeldin may not soon exit EPA.
“Frankly, there may be a feeling of it’s quixotic. He’s not going to resign. He’s not going to get fired,” Browning said. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t do the right thing, right? We need to say, ‘This is what is at stake.’”
Browning started Moms Clean Air Force with two members of the Environmental Defense Fund’s board in 2011. Its members, typically decked out in bright-red T-shirts at Capitol Hill hearings, have pushed EPA across administrations to stay tough on air pollution and climate change.
The group often battled with the agency during Trump’s first term and called for Scott Pruitt to resign as EPA administrator, Browning said. He did leave in 2018 under a storm of ethics troubles.
“EPA Administrator Pruitt, that was different circumstances, but that was a successful campaign,” Browning said. “What he was doing was a shadow of what is happening now.”
Reporter Ariel Wittenberg contributed.
Contact this reporter on Signal at KevinBogardus.89.
