Lee Zeldin’s Push To Gut Epa Is Giving Him Political Heft In Maga Land

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.

Now the question is what doors a role in Trump’s Cabinet might be opening — or closing — for Zeldin.

“If he can do a good job and continue on the path that he’s on, then there’ll be all kinds of different potential options open to him,” said Andrew Giuliani, who ran against Zeldin in the 2022 GOP primary for governor and is son of the former New York City mayor-turned-Trump-attorney.

But others who have known Zeldin wonder what happened to the middle-of-the-road lawmaker they once knew, who acknowledged that humans were warming the Earth and bucked Trump’s first administration on offshore oil drilling.

“He’s really turned out to be a chameleon in the political landscape,” said Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, a group based in Zeldin’s former congressional district. “He’s always had higher political aspirations, and I believe he has his eyes set on the White House.”

Green groups on the island say they feel betrayed by the slash-and-burn style Zeldin is bringing to EPA. Sea-level rise poses a serious threat to the low-lying coastal region he calls home, and he had expressed support over the years for shifting to renewable energy — in contrast to Trump’s pro-fossil fuel agenda. As a lawmaker, he belonged to the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus and the Conservative Climate Caucus, two blocs that recognize the need to address global warming.

Esposito — who has followed Zeldin’s political career for more than a decade — said she doesn’t recognize this version of him. "Honestly, I think he wants to be the next Trump,” she said.

EPA declined a request to interview the administrator. But Zeldin has publicly laid out his approach to leading EPA as “living up to our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, and work hand-in-hand with our state partners to advance our shared mission.”

In choosing Zeldin to run the agency — surprising even some fellow Republicans — the president picked a fierce defender who Trump allies say can effectively market his “energy dominance” agenda. He is a departure from the two people who headed EPA during Trump’s first term: Scott Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general whose tenure in Washington flamed out in a morass of scandals, and Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who kept a low profile while gutting Obama-era regulations.

“If you told me, ‘Give me a list of 100 people,’ I probably wouldn’t have come up with Lee Zeldin,” said Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and close Trump ally.

“And yet, as soon as he was named, I thought, ‘This makes sense.’ He came from a moderate district. He has a moderate demeanor,” Cramer continued. “But he’s really bright, and he’s a lawyer, and you need a good lawyer at EPA. He filled the bill perfectly. And he’s pulling it off really well.”

Myron Ebell, who led Trump’s 2017 EPA transition team, said the 45-year-old administrator is young, ambitious and likely angling to move up in the Cabinet or become a “big time” environmental lawyer in the private sector. He noted that running the environmental agency has never been a springboard to higher political office.

“In the past, EPA administrator [has] been a dead-end job. Older people have done it after doing a number of other things,” Ebell said. “Pruitt was very ambitious, but he let his ambition get ahead of his performance. He didn’t bother to master the job. Zeldin is making sure he is doing things differently."

Zeldin’s approach shouldn’t surprise those who know him, said Chapin Fay, who served as his campaign manager during his 2014 congressional race.

“He’s a right-of-center conservative Republican who is suspicious of the government and is relishing his current role as one of the Trump disruptors,” Fay said.

‘Gold bars,’ TV hits and political capital

Zeldin started making waves about alleged waste and fraud within weeks of joining the Trump administration — latching on to $20 billion in climate grants that EPA had deposited at Citibank for eight nonprofit recipients late during Joe Biden’s presidency.

The money was part of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the largest climate grant program in EPA’s history, and aimed to help the nonprofits leverage both public and private financing to pay for projects in mostly low-income communities. Democrats had been confident that the program, created by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, would be safe from Trump’s interference, in large part because Congress had given EPA until last Sept. 30 to legally commit the $20 billion.

Instead, Zeldin has moved to reclaim the money, contending in a video on X that the agency’s haste to get the cash out the door “meant the Biden administration knew they were wasting it.” He has also cried foul at past and present roles by former Biden officials and other Democrats in some of the organizations set to receive the grants, as well as what he calls an overall lack of EPA oversight.

The agency has declined to offer any specific evidence of fraud or waste, however, contending in court proceedings it has the right to terminate grants that conflict with the Trump administration’s priorities. The Justice Department has separately opened an investigation into the grant program, despite a complaint from a veteran prosecutor who resigned after saying the agency lacked “sufficient evidence” of wrongdoing.

The nonprofits say the administration is illegally blocking their access to the money, forcing them to curtail or postpone some programs and putting some of the groups’ future operations in jeopardy. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, a Barack Obama nominee, expressed exasperation with the Trump administration’s arguments in a hearing Wednesday, telling one DOJ lawyer: “Here we are, weeks in, and you're still unable to proffer me any information with regard to any kind of investigation or malfeasance.”

The fight is part of Trump’s larger attempt to block or claw back Biden-era spending he disagrees with, defying Congress’ constitutional authority over the federal purse.

In classic Trumpian fashion, Zeldin has seized on an eye-catching phrase he can repeat on conservative media to drive his argument of wasteful spending — “gold bars.” The words came from a covertly shot video, released in December by the conservative media organization Project Veritas, in which an EPA adviser described the Biden administration’s attempt to spend congressionally approved climate money before Trump could stop it: “It truly feels like we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing, like, gold bars off the edge.”

Zeldin has said he “will not rest” until the money is returned to the federal Treasury, and has used his frequent appearances on conservative media to spread the message.

All told, Zeldin has made at least 22 appearances on Fox News and Fox Business since being nominated, according to POLITICO's tally of his media appearances. He has made fewer appearances on CNN and on local channels such as CBS New York, as well as conservative outlets like Newsmax and “The Ben Shapiro Show” podcast.

Zeldin again leaned into his camera-friendly style this past week, posting a video on X announcing the closure of an EPA museum that he disparaged as a Biden-era “shrine to environmental justice and climate change.” The video caught the attention of television producer turned National Review commentator Rob Long, who quipped on the podcast "3 Martini Lunch" that Zeldin was a standout in the Cabinet.

"Do you know any other Cabinet-level Trump official who is not being overshadowed and in many ways emasculated by Elon Musk?” Long said of Zeldin on the podcast. “Write his name down, because he’s going to run for governor, he’s going to run for president, he’s a very ambitious man.”

‘Real turning point’

Zeldin landed in Trump’s orbit — a tight-knit world of New York Republicans — as early as 2014, when the future president boosted the Long Island lawyer and state senator’s bid for Congress by making robocalls ahead of the GOP primary.

“Hi, this is Donald Trump,” households on Long Island heard that year, describing Zeldin as “nobody better, very conservative.”

Trump had toyed with a presidential campaign just three years earlier, and was vowingto run for the White House in 2016 if the “right” candidate didn’t emerge.

Zeldin went on to defeat Democratic incumbent Tim Bishop to clinch New York’s 1st District. Trump later claimed some credit for the victory during an interview with Fox News: “I was asked to do robocalls, which is a pretty powerful thing … for a lot of different people, David Perdue and Steve King, and Lee Zeldin … I did them and they all won their races.”

In a 2016 interview with the Long Island newspaper Newsday, Zeldin recalled Trump calling him after the 2014 election and sharing that he had recorded robocalls only for Zeldin and one other candidate.

Zeldin in the interview also touted his shared history with Trump, whom he had met the year before with his wife at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. Zeldin noted that both his father and Trump are alumni of the New York Military Academy.

Zeldin was known then as a “sort of moderate” Republican lawmaker who “very occasionally” supported environmental policies, said Alex Beauchamp, the Northeast region director for the environmental group Food and Water Watch. In Congress, he voted for bills requiring EPA to regulate harmful “forever chemicals,” opposed cuts to the agency’s estuaries program, and backed legislation to extend tax credits for renewable energy projects.

His positions shifted as he moved closer to Trump, Beauchamp said — starting as one of the president's handpicked defenders during his first Senate impeachment trial in 2020, and later when running against Hochul in 2022. Zeldin also took Trump’s side in another dispute, by voting against certifying Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

The 2022 midterms were disappointing for Republicans, whose hoped-for red wave largely dissipated amid Democratic anger at the demise of Roe v. Wade. But Zeldin came within 6 percentage points of victory and helped the GOP flip three House seats after running a Trump-style campaign focused on the economy and crime. He also accused Hochul of “pay-to-play corruption,” pledged to reverse New York’s fracking ban and called for unraveling the state’s ambitious climate plans.

“That campaign is a real turning point where he saw … if you're an ambitious Republican, you’ve got to kind of become a Donald Trump guy,” said Beauchamp.

Trump and other Republicans took notice.

"People in the Trump camp really liked Zeldin, and how he ran a totally MAGA campaign in New York and almost won,” Ebell said.

By 2024, Zeldin joined the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank stocked with Trump loyalists that had been planning the transition period after the election. He led the group's China Policy Initiative. He ultimately emerged as a key surrogate for Trump’s 2024 campaign, frequently visiting swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Trump’s joint fundraising committee also received a total of $75,000 from Leadership America Needs, a political action committee that Zeldin founded after his run for governor. That PAC, whose website is dominated by photos of Zeldin and still lists him as chair, had nearly $73,000 on hand at the end of the year, according to its most recent disclosure. (Zeldin stepped down from the PAC when he was confirmed to head EPA, agency spokesperson Molly Vaselioutold POLITICO’s E&E News.)

After Trump clinched the White House last fall, Zeldin said he was one of the president’s first calls. “We were talking about different positions,” he told a New York City news channel in February. “He was decisive. He knew that he wanted me to come serve as the administrator of the EPA.”

‘Doesn’t sound like this guy’

Fay, the former campaign manager, said Zeldin's core beliefs haven’t changed. Instead, he described Zeldin as all-in on the task at hand and responding to his constituents, who this time are Trump supporters.

“Suffolk County, his district, is really kind of Trump country in New York,” Fay said. “As Trump became bigger, powerful and more victorious, so did Lee.”

But Bob DeLuca, president of the environmental organization Group for the East End in Zeldin’s former district, said Zeldin has taken a sharper right turn than expected.

In 2016, Zeldin said during a congressional debate that he believed the science of climate change and that human activities — namely, the burning of fossil fuels — were driving the problem.

“There are many different ways that we can be better stewards of our environment,” Zeldin said at the time. “But the key is to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, to become more environmentally friendly and pursue alternative energy, clean and green energy.”

His former positions are entirely at odds with the slew of environmental rollbacks Zeldin has championed as EPA administrator, DeLuca said. That blizzard of attacks on green regulations includes Zeldin’s announcement last month that he will seek to overturn EPA’s 2009 conclusion that climate change imperils human health and the environment.

The declaration, known as the endangerment finding, has provided the legal bulwark for EPA’s subsequent climate regulations on pollution sources such as cars, trucks and power plants. In a short video on X hailing that decision, Zeldin disparaged the 2009 finding as “the holy grail of the climate change religion.”

“When I [heard] some of that language, I was like, ‘This doesn’t sound like this guy,'” DeLuca said. "I think he should know better.”

Some scientists who downplay the danger of global warming say that revisiting the endangerment finding would allow EPA to argue that climate change isn’t harmful and might even be a good thing — even as Zeldin’s hometown grapples with the consequences of warming.

Paul Pontieri, a self-described conservative Democrat and the longtime mayor of Patchogue, New York, recalled working with Zeldin years ago to secure federal funding to upgrade his Long Island village’s sewer plant. Sewage pollution and poor water quality are long-standing challenges across Zeldin’s former congressional district.

Now that Zeldin is leading EPA, Pontieri said he worries that funding for those kinds of projects won’t be available anymore.

“I find his actions as a congressman aren’t the same actions he’s taking now,” Ponteiri said of Zeldin. “My hope is that over a period of time, he’ll take a look and remember the community he grew up in and the island he lived on and what our needs are as it relates to the goals and objectives of the administration.”

GOP wait-and-see

For all his talk of “gold bars” and green scams, Zeldin is still highlighting his past support for environmental causes and ability to work with Democrats.

At a conference in late March for environmental regulators from across the country, Zeldin praised Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for having visited all of New York’s counties, and said he hopes to visit all 50 states as EPA administrator. Zeldin later quipped that during his time in Congress, he often appeared “towards the top” of the Lugar Center’s bipartisan index.

“We can speak out loudly and passionately on causes that are important to our heart, but we [should] also find ways to work together on issues,” he told the room of state regulators.

Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), who co-founded the Climate Solutions Caucus, said Zeldin’s moves to gut the agency didn’t surprise him given the fast-pace push among Cabinet members to carry out the president’s agenda.

Zeldin’s intentions, he said, will probably become clearer after the administration moves past the shock-and-awe element of its first few months and finishes rolling back Biden- and Obama-era regulations.

But Curbelo said he’s potentially worried about Zeldin’s move to overturn the endangerment finding. Zeldin as a congressman voted against an appropriations rider that targeted EPA’s declaration that carbon pollution is a threat.

“I know that he understands climate science and I know that he understands that the agency has a role in addressing all of that,” said Curbelo. “But if this is some kind of radical change that's going to essentially put us in a position where we’re ignoring this reality, then that would be concerning.”

Timothy Cama and Alex Guillén contributed to this report.