What Has Happened to Lee Zeldin?
Testimony of Michelle Roos, Executive Director, Environmental Protection Network
to the Environmental Protection Agency on Reconsideration of the 2009 Endangerment Finding and Greenhouse Gas Vehicle Standards
Public Hearing — August 20, 2025
My name is Michelle Roos, and I am Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Network, which includes over 700 volunteers — scientists, economists, and other experts who worked at EPA. We have posted to our website full versions of our comments that factually document and expand on what we’re saying here. We will also be submitting additional details in our written comments to EPA.
First, I would like to thank the current EPA career staff — dedicated public servants who continue to show up everyday to protect human health and the environment, despite working under hostile conditions. We see you, we thank you, and we know you are fighting for all of our wellbeing.
To understand why EPA is reversing years of work on climate change, we must first ask: What in the world has happened to Lee Zeldin?
Before joining the Trump administration, Zeldin told Congress, “We will have never done enough to ensure that our water and our air is clean, safe, and healthy.”
Now, under Trump, he has put forward a rollback agenda that will put more pollution into the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, significantly increasing our risks of getting cancer, heart disease, and lung disease.
Zeldin is hiding from EPA’s own data, which shows that the Trump-Zeldin ‘rollback agenda’ will lead to 200,000 additional deaths and 100 million additional asthma attacks through 2050.
Before joining the Trump administration, Zeldin promised families he would help them make ends meet.
Now, under Trump, Zeldin talks about saving some companies money while hiding the far greater costs his pollution agenda is dumping on families — saddling them with medical bills, missed work days, and missed school days.
EPA’s data show that the $39 billion the Trump-Zeldin ‘rollback agenda’ will save some companies is a small fraction of the $254 billion in annual costs for public health and the economy.
Zeldin claims that rolling back EPA’s clean car rule will save Americans who can afford new cars hundreds of billions of dollars because cars that guzzle gas are cheaper to buy. What Zeldin doesn’t tell us is that, according to the same government data he is relying on, the gasoline bill for all Americans will go up by $4 trillion through 2050 because gas prices will be higher at the pump for everyone.
Before joining the Trump administration, Zeldin voted to protect EPA’s budget from Trump’s Project 2025 budget axe.
Now, under Trump, Zeldin wants to cut EPA’s budget by more than half.
Before joining the Trump administration, Zeldin promised Congress he would faithfully uphold the law.
Now, under Trump, he is ignoring the law by cancelling hundreds of congressionally-mandated grants that make all of us healthier and safer.
Before joining the Trump administration, Zeldin told Congress that his views on climate change would be determined by EPA scientists, saying, “I am someone who believes strongly that we should work with the scientists, leaving the science to the scientists.”
Now, under Trump, Zeldin has shut down EPA’s main science office, driven hundreds of scientists out of the agency, and purged EPA’s science advisory boards.
Before joining the Trump administration, Lee Zeldin believed climate change was real.
Now, under Trump, he tells the public that CO2 is “good” while scratching out decades of scientific evidence with a Trump Sharpie.
In 2008, EPA Administrator and Republican political appointee Stephen Johnson, a scientist, told President Bush that “the state of the latest climate change science does not permit a negative [endangerment] finding.”
Today, climate science is clearer than ever, climate disasters are more destructive than ever, and the technology to reduce emissions is more affordable than ever.
Zeldin says he is “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.”
Climate change is not religion. It is science. Science that places upon our shoulders a moral responsibility to do something.
Before joining the Trump administration, Lee Zeldin said the key to solving climate change is to “reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.”
Now, under Trump, he champions Trump’s fossil fuel dominance slogan and focuses on building AI data centers with little regard to their impact on the air we breathe or the electricity bills we pay. All while killing clean energy grants that save local communities money and cut pollution.
Let me speak plainly and clearly on behalf of the Environmental Protection Network and all those who value facts and science over partisan rhetoric. Zeldin’s flip flop on climate science and his plans to prevent EPA from taking action are as extreme as they are dangerous to our health and safety.
How extreme is Zeldin’s plan? Even major energy industries are worried about Zeldin’s reckless approach.
America should lead the world responding to the clear and present danger of climate change. Reasonable people will disagree on how to go about it, but there can be no doubt that greenhouse gas emissions endanger all of us and reducing them is a core component of EPA’s responsibility.
And, there can be no doubt that Lee Zeldin seems to be putting his political ambition ahead of his duty to protect our health and our environment.