Former New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin was confirmed by the Senate Wednesday as President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator — earning bipartisan support.
The 56-42 vote featured Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego of Arizona, as well as John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, giving their approval of Zeldin alongside all 53 Republicans in the upper chamber.
The 44-year-old ex-congressman had flown through the Senate Environment and Public Works vetting process and passed a cloture vote on the Senate floor earlier Wednesday by the same margin and with the same three Democrats supporting him.
In his confirmation hearing, the former Suffolk County congressman and 2022 Empire State gubernatorial candidate pointed to his record of cracking down on pollution and cleaning up waterways in his home state as proof that his EPA would focus on “protecting our environment, while also protecting our economy.”
Zeldin criticized Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden, for “suffocating the economy” and said the 47th president’s administration would “do everything in our power to harness the greatness of American innovation with the greatness of American conservation and environmental stewardship.”
After taking office, Trump signed executive orders to increase domestic oil and gas production — making good on a 2024 campaign promise — and declare a national energy emergency.
Biden and ex-Vice President Kamala Harris had, by contrast, pursued energy policies to push the US toward net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 — pausing export permits for liquefied natural gas, scrapping or stalling new oil and gas pipelines and trying to bar new permits for drilling on federal land.
Under Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, billions of dollars were handed out for various environmental programs.
Zeldin told members of the Environment and Public Works Committee during his hearing that he also would not be swayed by the fossil fuel lobby, while creating distance between himself and Trump on the issue of climate change.
“There is no dollar — large or small — that can influence the decisions that I make, who has access to me and how I am ruling in my obligations under the law,” he told Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).
“I believe that climate change is real,” he also told Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), arguing that Trump’s claims of climate change being a “hoax” peddled by Democrats and media allies was, rather, an expression of concern “about the economic costs of some policies.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) in Zeldin’s confirmation hearing said she looked forward to the future EPA administrator tackling “spiking energy costs and rolling blackouts” posed by an overreliance on renewable energy alternatives.
The New Yorker told Capito and other members on the panel that the EPA would pursue both the “cleanest” and “greenest” energy solutions without slapping burdensome regulations on producers.
Trump, 78, in nominating the ex-Republican rep, touted his “very strong legal background,” which he said “will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions … while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards.”
