President-elect Donald Trump on Monday named former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as he continues to build out his future administration with loyal supporters.
Zeldin, a Republican who mounted a failed bid for governor of New York in 2022, would “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet,” Trump said in a statement.
Zeldin, who left Congress in January 2023, was a surprising pick for the role. His public appearances both in his own campaigns and on behalf of Trump often had him speaking about issues such as the military, national security, antisemitism, U.S.-Israel relations, immigration, and crime.
He was among the Republicans in Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 election results. While in Congress, he did not serve on committees with oversight of environmental policy.
In 2016, he pushed to change the designation of about 150 square miles of federal waters in Long Island Sound to state jurisdiction for New York and Rhode Island. He wanted to open the area to striped bass fishing, which is allowed in state waters but banned in the federal area.
Zeldin said at the time that he wanted to restore local control and common sense to fishery management. He later pushed to allow striped bass fishing in an amendment to a federal spending bill. Environmental groups criticized the amendment, which they said risked overfishing in the area.
Trump often pointed to Zeldin’s performance in the 2022 gubernatorial race, when the Republican did far better than had been expected against Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul. While Trump didn’t win New York State in last week’s election, he did far better than he had during previous elections, particularly in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens.
New York Republican chair Ed Cox said Zeldin’s surprise appointment was “a testament to President Trump’s commitment to revitalizing the original mission of the EPA—an agency created . . . under President Richard Nixon to protect our nation’s environment.”
The announcement comes after Trump selected longtime adviser Stephen Miller, an immigration hard-liner, to be the deputy chief of policy in his new administration and named Rep. Elise Stefanik as his nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Confirming the Miller appointment, Vice President-elect JD Vance posted a message of congratulations Monday on X and said, “This is another fantastic pick by the president.” The announcement was first reported by CNN.
Miller is one of Trump’s longest-serving aides, dating back to his first campaign for the White House. He was a senior adviser in Trump’s first term and has been a central figure in many of his policy decisions, particularly on immigration, including Trump’s move to separate thousands of immigrant families as a deterrence program in 2018.
Miller has also helped craft many of Trump’s hard-line speeches, and was often the public face of those policies during Trump’s first term in office and during his campaigns.
Since leaving the White House, Miller has served as the president of America First Legal, an organization of former Trump advisers fashioned as a conservative version of the American Civil Liberties Union, challenging the Biden administration, media companies, universities and others over issues such as freedom of speech and religion and national security.
He was also a frequent presence during Trump’s campaign this year, traveling aboard his plane and often speaking ahead of Trump during the pre-shows at his rallies.
Miller drew large cheers at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden during the race’s final stretch, telling the crowd that, “your salvation is at hand,” after what he cast as “decades of abuse that has been heaped upon the good people of this nation — their jobs looted and stolen from them and shipped to Mexico, Asia and foreign countries. The lives of their loved ones ripped away from them by illegal aliens, criminal gangs and thugs who don’t belong in this country.”
“We stand here today at a crossroads,” he went on, casting the election as “a choice between betrayal and renewal, between self-destruction and salvation, between the failure of America or the triumph of America.”
Because it is not a Cabinet position, the appointment does not need Senate confirmation.
Zeldin said in 2016 that he disagreed with then-candidate Trump’s call to eliminate the EPA. He told a candidate forum on Long Island that he saw “a need to improve the agency,” including bettering its relationship with Congress and deferring to lawmakers on some regulations, “which is very different from advocating to eliminate it.”
“When a proposal is being signed off on that really should be passed through Congress, and going through the legislative process, I think that’s what caused the additional tension,” Zeldin said, according to the Suffolk Times. “Certain policies are being implemented through the EPA that should be vetted out statutorily through the legislative process, through committee of jurisdiction, more than what we’re seeing right now.”
—Michelle L. Price, Jill Colvin and Zeke Miller, Associated Press
Miller reported from Washington, D.C. Associated Press writers Matthew Daly in Washington, D.C., and Michael Sisak in New York contributed to this report.