President Donald Trump’s wild-card pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency has emerged as one of the most devoted public champions for his efforts to demolish the Biden agenda — and MAGA world is taking notice.
Lee Zeldin’s crusade to revoke more than $20 billion in already-doled-out climate grants has taken the EPA into uncharted legal territory, provoked a spat inside the Justice Department and left some environmental nonprofits fearing possible bankruptcy. He’s made dozens of appearances on conservative television outlets such as Fox News, Fox Business and Newsmax — proclaiming the “death of the green new scam” on Laura Ingraham’s primetime show — while using his own videos on X and EPA’s YouTube channel to call for rolling back “suffocating” regulations and defanging the “climate change religion.”
Zeldin has also praised Elon Musk and embraced Trump’s call for slashing 65 percent from his own agency’s budget, a target that he insists will cut waste, bring back auto jobs and boost U.S. energy dominance. The Sierra Club has denounced the proposed cuts as “sabotage.”
The Army reservist and former House member’s performance as Trump’s environmental enforcer is winning cheers from the president’s supporters, according to interviews with a dozen of Zeldin’s former colleagues, political opponents and local officials in and around his home community of Long Island. This comes a little more than two years after Zeldin’s aggressive, crime-focused campaign for governor in deep-blue New York came surprisingly close to unseating Democrat Kathy Hochul — an outcome that caused fellow Republicans to predict a bright future for him in GOP politics, possibly as national or state party chair.
