Lee Zeldin
person
Lee Zeldin is the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, confirmed in January 2025. He previously represented New York's 1st congressional district in the U.S. House from 2015 to 2023 and was the 2022 Republican nominee for New York Governor. Under his leadership the EPA moved rapidly to roll back environmental regulations, staffing, and enforcement programs.
Entries involving this actor (3)
EPA illegally terminates $2.8B Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program
The Environmental Protection Agency, under Administrator Lee Zeldin and acting on Trump executive orders issued January 20, 2025, terminated the Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program — a $2.8 billion program established by the Inflation Reduction Act to fund pollution reduction and climate readiness in underserved communities — and directed grantees to close their projects. On June 12, 2026, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel (D. South Carolina) ruled the termination "illegal" and voided the action, finding the EPA violated the Inflation Reduction Act. Gergel declined to issue a permanent injunction requiring reinstatement, noting that rehiring the fired program staff appeared "impractical," leaving hundreds of community projects in limbo.
EPA used litigation to circumvent Clean Air Act rulemaking, seeking to vacate Biden PM2.5 soot standard
On November 25, 2025, the Trump EPA filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit asking the court to vacate the Biden-era National Ambient Air Quality Standard for fine particulate matter (PM2.5)—tightened from 12 to 9 micrograms per cubic meter—by "confessing error" rather than following the Clean Air Act's required notice-and-comment rulemaking process. The move would eliminate a standard projected to prevent 4,500 annual premature deaths, 2,000 hospital visits, and 800,000 asthma cases by 2032. By requesting court vacatur instead of formal rulemaking, the EPA avoids the statutory requirement to publish reasoned explanations and allow public comment on the rollback.
Trump exempts 180+ facilities from Clean Air Act air-toxics rules via an EPA email inbox
Across 2025, President Trump signed seven proclamations invoking Clean Air Act Section 112(i)(4) — a provision unused in the statute's 55-year history — to grant more than 180 industrial facilities in 38 states and Puerto Rico a two-year exemption from federal hazardous-air-pollutant standards. A May 2026 ProPublica investigation found that facilities qualified by emailing an EPA-run inbox, with no rigorous application and no meaningful role for the agency's air-quality experts. The statute permits such exemptions only where compliance technology is "not available" and the exemption is "in the national security interests of the United States."