Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin told reporters at agency headquarters Friday that bureaucrats resisting or undermining President Donald Trump’s EPA agenda have no place at the agency.
Zeldin — who was confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday by a 56-42 vote — emphasized that he hopes to work together with career agency staff to produce positive results for the country in his comments, but added that those who look to stymie Trump’s agenda from within should not be working for the EPA.
“I think there’s going to be a headcount reduction in agencies all across the federal government,” Zeldin said. “For us, we have to closely monitor who is deciding to stay and who’s deciding to go, and make sure that we’re filling all of our most important positions with urgency if any vacancies are created. Quite frankly, I’d want anyone who is currently working at the EPA to view their job as essential and important. That sense of pride in their job is something that will increase their productivity and it’ll enhance the agency, and will make the American public proud. We want to be able to work with all of the talented career staff here in the building.”
“I don’t believe that anyone should be here at EPA who is not committed to the agency, mission and the lawful directives coming from the duly-elected President of the United States,” Zeldin added.
The EPA was a hotbed of bureaucratic resistance during the first Trump administration, with prominent agency employees delaying and undermining some of Trump’s policy priorities while others used encrypted messaging apps to communicate discreetly with each other about efforts to impede the Trump agenda, for example.
Zeldin will have his work cut out for him at EPA, an agency that the Biden administration used to route huge sums of cash to left-wing activists and Democrat Party insiders, enact a de facto “electric vehicle (EV) mandate” and crack down on fossil fuel-fired power plants. Among other campaign promises, Trump has promised or already moved to essentially cancel the Biden administration’s spending on green energy subsidies, scrap the regulations that force EVs on consumers and re-evaluate the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding that determined greenhouse gases to be dangerous for public health.
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