EPA Administrator Zeldin to Testify Before Congress

Budget hearings start today for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with Administrator Lee Zeldin scheduled to testify before at least three committees over the week. Since his confirmation in January 2025, he has moved EPA away from its core mission of protecting people’s health and environment by systematically dismantling dozens of safeguards for clean air and clean water while gutting the agency’s scientific and technical expertise. 

Now Zeldin will try to defend budget cuts that would compound the damage already done in his first year at EPA. President Trump’s proposed FY27 budget calls for a 52% decrease from this year’s spending levels – making clear, once again, where the administration’s priorities are when it comes to people’s health and safety. 

It is vital that Congress ensures EPA carries out its core mission of protecting human health and the environment, as the law requires. This is what is at stake. 

Inviting more life-altering pollution and weakening environmental protections isn’t going to lower anyone’s health care costs. Eliminating the government’s ability to face climate change won’t make housing more affordable. It’ll only uproot families, drive insurance premiums higher until they’re out of reach, and burden communities everywhere with more damages, more economic losses, more death.

Here are just some of the most egregious actions by Zeldin’s EPA:

Declaring that people’s lives and health have no value

Protecting public health is the very reason why EPA was created. Under Zeldin, however, the agency made the stunning announcement in January that it will no longer estimate the economic value of health benefits for any Clean Air Act rules going forward. 

This decision means EPA will only consider the costs to industry while ignoring the benefits of lives saved, hospital visits avoided and lost work and school days prevented because of respiratory problems when making decisions related to air pollution. 

EPA always has done rigorous economic analysis of both the benefits and costs of proposed clean air protections. Now it will look only at the costs, which will severely skew the results. The action effectively declares that human lives and health have no monetary value at all.

Offering free passes to pollute – by email 

Zeldin’s EPA in March 2025 created a new website that encouraged the “regulated community” to apply for special presidential exemptions from the pollution standards that address the most toxic contaminants, including mercury, arsenic and lead. Those pollution limits were adopted after extensive public comments were accepted and technical analysis was done, and the standards could be met with available, proven solutions. Under Zeldin, polluters only had to submit an email to get a free pass to pollute.

So far, the Trump administration has granted blanket exemptions to more than 160 facilities, including chemical plants, coal-fired power plants and commercial sterilizers, allowing them to ignore clean air standards and release more toxic air pollution.

EDF and Environmental Integrity Project have created a map showing the facilities that were invited to apply for the special passes to pollute. 

Denying the clear link between pollution and rising climate dangers 

Zeldin stood with President Trump at the White House in February to announce the repeal of the Endangerment Finding, EPA’s scientific determination that climate pollution harms human health and welfare. The finding underpins all federal actions to protect people from the damage the pollution causes – from extreme weather to health consequences like asthma and heart disease to economic consequences like lost crops and rising costs. 

EPA’s proposal to repeal the finding had relied almost exclusively on a report from the “Climate Working Group” – a hand-picked group of five climate action opponents who were convened, and then worked, in secret. The group’s report was denounced by dozens of scientists for being riddled with errors and misrepresenting climate science. Environmental Defense Fund and Union of Concerned Scientists sued the administration for violating federal transparency laws, and a judge ruled that the “Climate Working Group” had to hand over documents related to the report. They are now posted on EDF’s website. 

The final rule overturning the Endangerment Finding does not mention the report. Instead, it relies on new and hastily conducted modeling analysis and asserts that it is “futile” to try to address the massive amount of climate pollution from the transportation sector. EDF is one of many organizations, states and cities that have filed a lawsuit challenging that final rule. We have also submitted an extensive, well-documented petition to Administrator Zeldin that points out he is required by law to reconsider his seriously flawed analysis and re-open it for public comment. 

Gutting limits on climate pollution from cars and trucks

The repeal of the Endangerment Finding also overturns all federal limits on climate pollution from cars and trucks. The transportation sector is the largest source of climate pollution in the U.S., but Zeldin’s repeal claims that trying to reduce it would be “futile” – even though there are proven solutions on the market now.  

The Trump administration’s own analysis concludes that repealing these protections will increase fuel prices by 25 cents per gallon in 2035 and by 76 cents per gallon in 2050. Americans would be forced to spend as much as $1.7 trillion more on fuel – based on analysis from before gas prices skyrocketed. 

An EDF analysis also shows that the repeals of the Endangerment Finding and the vehicle standards would add 18 billion tons of climate-altering pollution to the atmosphere and increase harmful air pollution, leading to as many as 77,000 more early deaths and 52 million more asthma attacks by 2055. 

Weakening limits on large sources of health-harming pollution

The Trump administration is moving aggressively to remove health and environmental safeguards that have protected communities across the U.S. The result is more pollution and more health harms.

Under Zeldin, EPA has rolled back limits on mercury, lead and other hazardous air pollution from coal-fired power plants. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards were strengthened in 2024. The rollback would return the U.S. to weaker protections and increase the risk of cancer, heart and lung disease and premature death. EDF is part of a broad coalition that has filed a lawsuit challenging the rollback. 

EDF also is suing the Trump EPA over its failure to implement protections against soot, which causes lung disease, asthma attacks and heart attacks when breathed, and opposing its attempt to roll back the Good Neighbor Plan, which protects millions of people who are breathing unhealthy air in downwind states from the upwind smokestacks lacking modern pollution controls.

Rolling back limits on methane pollution from the oil and gas sector

Earlier this month Zeldin finalized a rule to weaken federal methane standards for flaring enacted during the previous administration, likely as a harbinger of even more drastic and unproductive changes to come.

Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is a climate super pollutant responsible for about 30% of the warming our planet is experiencing today. Reducing methane pollution from the oil and gas industry is the fastest way to slow down the rate of climate change.

The 2024 standards reduced methane pollution through commonsense steps like requiring leak detection and repairs after failure to address venting, flaring and leaks led to about $3.5 billion worth of wasted natural gas – 16 million metric tons of methane – in 2023 alone. Both large and independent producers have gone on record in support of federal methane regulation. Colorado has begun implementing standards for existing sources with the support of the two largest trade associations, representing operators such as Chevron and Oxy. Most 2024 methane standards for new oil and gas production are already in effect. Colorado, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wyoming were early adopters of those new source standards.

Hiring industry lobbyists as regulators

Inside Zeldin’s EPA, many high-ranking regulators have deep ties to heavily polluting industries, raising concerns about the influence of major polluters on rules meant to protect public health. For example, several officials within EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, which is tasked with keeping harmful chemicals out of everything from plastic toys to cleaning products, come from groups lobbying for weaker chemical safety rules.

Former industry officials already have started dismantling rules that govern air pollution, vehicle emissions, greenhouse gas reporting, exposure to toxic chemicals and more. Over the course of 2025, federal agencies acted on 80% of regulatory requests sent to President Trump by manufacturing groups. 

Brittany Kelm, a senior policy adviser to President Trump, describes the administration’s approach as “white glove service” for the fossil fuel industry and says that she’s a part of a “concierge” team assembled to carry out the president’s energy priorities, which include keeping coal plants open (even past their retirement dates), expanding domestic mining and fast-tracking fossil fuel infrastructure — all while rolling back climate protections. 

Attacking science and burying information

At about the same time Zeldin was being confirmed by Congress, President Trump was dismissing EPA’s science advisors. Since then, EPA has moved to close its science research department. 

Zeldin’s EPA also is trying to undermine the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program – the source of vitally important information about the air pollution that causes climate change and makes life less healthy, more dangerous and more expensive for all Americans. Last year, Zeldin shut down the program’s reporting portal for over a month without explanation and then unlawfully tried to delay the deadlines for companies to report their climate pollution. Now the agency is proposing to get rid of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program altogether and has issued another unlawful deadline extension, which EDF and other groups are opposing. 

The Trump administration also refused to release the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory – an annual accounting of pollution that uses Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program data. EDF filed a lawsuit challenging the delay, obtained the Greenhouse Gas Inventory through the Freedom of Information Act and made it publicly available on its own website.

One more note – Zeldin has the dubious distinction of being the only EPA Administrator to ever speak at a conference of the Heartland Institute, a group that has long been involved in climate denial. And these are only a few examples of the damage Zeldin has done to the Environmental Protection Agency – an agency created by Congress for the explicit purpose of protecting people and the environment from pollution.