The Head of the EPA on the Future of the Agency

Summary

The Journal: The Head of the EPA on the Future of the Agency

Hosts: Kate Linebaugh and Ryan Knutson, with Jessica Mendoza
Episode Release Date: April 9, 2025
Production: Spotify and The Wall Street Journal

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Introduction

In the April 9, 2025 episode of The Journal, hosts Kate Linebaugh and Ryan Knutson, along with Jessica Mendoza, engage in an in-depth conversation with Lee Zeldin, the newly appointed Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The discussion centers around the transformative changes Zeldin is implementing within the agency, the implications of recent Supreme Court decisions on EPA’s regulatory authority, and the balance between environmental protection and economic growth.

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Background: The EPA's Historical Context

Kate Linebaugh opens the discussion by tracing the origins of the EPA, established in 1970 under President Richard Nixon. She highlights Nixon’s vision for the agency:

"The EPA has a clear mission to protect human health and the environment. The agency does this primarily through regulations on issues like air and water pollution." [00:32]

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Deregulatory Shift Under Lee Zeldin

Under President Trump’s administration, significant shifts have occurred within the EPA. Lee Zeldin, a Trump loyalist and former Congressman from Long Island, has spearheaded a series of deregulatory actions. Kate Linebaugh outlines these changes:

"Climate regulation is being rethought. Staff have been laid off, and billions of dollars in funding to green initiatives have been frozen." [00:32]

An unnamed analyst describes Zeldin’s actions as unprecedented:

"Deregulatory action in U.S. history... cutting 31 environmental rules regarding climate change, pollution, electric vehicles, and power plants." [01:11]

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Impact of the Loperbright Supreme Court Decision

The conversation delves into the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Loperbright v. EPA, which significantly curtailed the agency’s regulatory power by allowing federal judges to overrule agency interpretations of the law. Zeldin emphasizes the importance of adhering to statutory obligations:

"It's very important for us to honor the rule of law... we should not be as an agency going rogue and strangulating the economy just because we all have a desire to protect the environment." [06:11]

This decision, as explained by Kate Linebaugh, represents a major rollback of agency power:

"The decision means 40 federal judges can overrule a government agency's interpretation of the law. It's a meaningful rollback of agencies regulatory power." [05:48]

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Balancing Environmental Protection with Economic Growth

Zeldin articulates his vision of harmonizing environmental protection with economic prosperity. He argues against viewing environmental regulations and economic growth as mutually exclusive:

"Protecting the environment is not a binary choice with growing the economy." [03:50]

He criticizes blanket regulatory approaches that may harm industries and, consequently, the American populace:

"When you play it out... the people who will suffer the most are the Americans who can least afford it." [03:50]

Zeldin stresses the necessity of implementing existing laws without overstepping legal boundaries, especially in light of the Loperbright decision.

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Specific Policy Actions and Initiatives

1. Delaware River Basin Water Quality Standards Zeldin discusses his administration’s commitment to enhancing water quality standards:

"I just signed off on one. For the Delaware River Basin... stricter standards put on these plants to improve water quality." [12:40]

2. Addressing Raw Sewage in Southern California The EPA is tackling the longstanding issue of raw sewage spills from Tijuana into Southern California:

"There is funding from the USMCA, $300 million as part of that agreement to build a treatment facility... extraordinarily important for US impacts." [13:58]

Zeldin expresses optimism about Mexico’s cooperation:

"My hope is is that we can get Mexico to do more. We need Mexico to do more." [14:51]

3. Wildfire Response and Mitigation Reflecting on recent wildfires, Zeldin outlines the EPA’s proactive measures:

"There’s a lot of concern as it relates to forest management, prescribed burns, being prepared with water." [16:12]

He commends the EPA’s swift action post-wildfires:

"We ended up getting it done in under 30 days." [15:46]

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EPA’s Scientific Research and Future Plans

A significant portion of the discussion addresses concerns about the EPA’s scientific research capabilities. Reports suggest plans to eliminate the agency's scientific research arm and lay off over 1,000 scientists. Zeldin responds by clarifying the EPA’s ongoing commitment to science:

"The EPA is going to continue no matter what. In doing environmental science, we have these core statutory obligations that we must fulfill." [17:25]

He addresses potential misconceptions about reducing scientific capacity:

"Some people might want to say that we are getting rid of science by moving a scientist from one office to another... But we are going to be more thoughtful." [17:25]

Zeldin assures that the EPA will maintain its scientific integrity and continue to meet its statutory obligations despite structural changes.

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Supreme Court Decision on the Endangerment Finding

The episode revisits the 2009 Endangerment Finding, where the EPA concluded that six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, endanger human health by contributing to climate change. With President Trump seeking to challenge this finding, Zeldin elaborates:

"The endangerment finding... carbon dioxide, when mixed with these other five well-mixed gases, do contribute to climate change." [08:13]

He acknowledges ongoing regulatory processes to reassess this finding:

"We will go through that process, and as we get further along in the process, then we start making conclusions and decisions as to how to go forward on this policy." [08:42]

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Conclusion and Future Outlook

The episode concludes with Zeldin reaffirming his dedication to the EPA’s mission amidst significant administrative and judicial changes. He emphasizes the agency’s role in implementing existing laws and preparing for future environmental challenges without overstepping legal boundaries.

"We have not yet reached any decisions [regarding scientific restructuring], and we have not yet reached any decisions." [17:25]

Zeldin’s tenure as EPA Administrator is portrayed as one seeking to balance environmental stewardship with economic vitality, operating within the confines of the law as interpreted by the Supreme Court.

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Key Takeaways

• Deregulatory Focus: Under Zeldin, the EPA is undertaking a significant rollback of recent environmental regulations to prioritize economic growth.
• Supreme Court Influence: The Loperbright decision limits the EPA’s ability to interpret laws autonomously, requiring strict adherence to statutory language.
• Selective Regulation: While broad deregulation is occurring, the EPA is maintaining or even introducing certain environmental protections, such as improved water quality standards in the Delaware River Basin.
• Bilateral Environmental Efforts: The EPA is actively engaging in cross-border environmental initiatives, particularly concerning sewage management between the US and Mexico.
• Scientific Integrity: Despite reports of potential reductions in scientific staff, Zeldin assures continued commitment to the EPA’s scientific mission, aiming to fulfill statutory obligations thoughtfully.

This episode provides a comprehensive overview of the current trajectory of the EPA under Lee Zeldin’s leadership, highlighting the complexities of environmental governance in a politically and legally constrained environment.

Transcript

[Kate Linebaugh]

The Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970 by President Richard Nixon.

[Richard Nixon]

The great question of the 70s is, shall we surrender to our surroundings or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?

[Kate Linebaugh]

The EPA has a clear to protect human health and the environment. The agency does this primarily through regulations on issues like air and water pollution. Now, under President Trump, things at the EPA are changing. Climate regulation is being rethought. Staff have been laid off, and billions of dollars in funding to green initiatives have been frozen. All of it is being directed by the man Trump appointed to lead the epa. Lee Zeldin, is calling it the biggest.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Deregulatory action in U.S. history. The EPA administrator is cutting 31 environmental rules regarding climate change, pollution, electric vehicles, and power plants. Lee Zeldin, who has.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Lee Zeldin, a Trump loyalist who spent eight years in Congress representing his Long Island Congressional district. Last week, I got to ask him some questions.

[Unnamed Host]

Administrator Zeldin, thanks for joining us today.

[Lee Zeldin]

Happy to. Thanks for having me.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Welcome to the Journal, our show about.

[Unnamed Host]

Money, business and power.

[Kate Linebaugh]

I'm Kate LINEBAUGH. It's Wednesday, April 9th. Coming up on the show, an interview with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.

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[Kate Linebaugh]

So the administration has been making tons of changes to the government, including working to shut down government departments like the Department of Education and usaid. Has there been talk of getting rid of the epa?

[Lee Zeldin]

No. EPA has important core functions. We have the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act. So these historic landmark laws that have been passed over the course of the last few decades with strong bipartisan support, have created statutory obligations on the part of the EPA to ensure that Americans have access to clean air, land, and water. And our priority right now is to pursue our powering our Great American Comeback initiative. And we're not slowing down.

[Unnamed Host]

Since taking over as EPA administrator, you've announced plans to pull back a raft of climate regulations. What is your objective?

[Lee Zeldin]

I think it's very important to understand that protecting the environment is not a binary choice with growing the economy. And too often regulations have strangulated the economy and going after industries wholesale. Some people talk about moving power from some fossil fuel production of baseload power to sources like wind. And they'll talk about wind as if it's not an intermittent source of energy. They'll talk about wind as if it's a replacement for baseload power. And when you look at the current grid, the current supply, the current demand, and you kind of play it out in your own mind as to what it looks like if you shut down all of these other industries wholesale, the people who will suffer the most are the Americans who can least afford it. So what happens as you're going through 2024? There's a high stakes election that's approaching which came up this past November 5th. And Americans decide what they want their priorities to be. And the number one issue that Americans were talking about was a strong, intense desire for the federal government to do a better job in helping to grow the economy. What we need to do is to make sure that we are implementing the laws that are on the books, putting rules and regulations in place that are following the law. So the United States Supreme Court, in a decision called Loperbright, said that these agencies like the EPA can't just create our own laws where there is vague language in statute and where agencies do so. The Supreme Court as we've seen, will overturn those actions.

[Kate Linebaugh]

The Loper bright decision. It was a watershed ruling by the Supreme Court last year.

[Unnamed Analyst]

Today the Supreme Court's conservative majority upended the way our federal government functions by overturning the 40 year old landmark decision, Chevron v. NRDC.

[Kate Linebaugh]

The decision means 40 federal judges can overrule a government agency's interpretation of the law. It's a meaningful rollback of agencies regulatory power.

[Lee Zeldin]

So for us, it's very important for us to honor the rule of law, to advance cooperative federalism, to follow our obligations under the law, and to understand, as the Supreme Court outlined in Loperbrite, that we should not be as an agency going rogue and strangulating the economy just because we all have a desire to protect the environment.

[Unnamed Host]

What do you see as a solution for global warming?

[Lee Zeldin]

Listen. What our priority here is. Clean air, land and water for all Americans. Cleaner, safer, healthier land, air and water across this country. It's a priority of President Trump. It's a priority of the American public. It has very strong bipartisan support across this country. And ultimately the EPA should not be Legislating what that a modification of the Clean Air act may look like. We have laws that are on the books. Our job is to implement those laws.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Congress created the Clean Air act to regulate emissions. The act empowers the EPA to set limits on air pollutants and penalize companies that violate the rules.

[Unnamed Host]

Would you want to amend the Clean Air Act?

[Lee Zeldin]

That's a decision for Congress. The EPA is not lobbying Congress for changes to any laws right now. And when Congress changes a law, they could go in one direction or the other. It's our job to follow the law. But if the law gets changed, we stand by ready to do our job to implement it.

[Unnamed Host]

Do you believe greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change?

[Lee Zeldin]

So this is part of a regulatory process that the agency is going to be going through. This is one of the announcements that you just referenced in looking at a 2009 decision called the endangerment finding.

[Kate Linebaugh]

In 2009, the EPA released what's known as the endangerment finding. This determination came to the conclusion that six greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide or methane endanger human health. It found that together, the emissions directly contribute to climate change. In January, President Trump called for a rethink of the legality of the endangerment finding.

[Lee Zeldin]

And the endangerment finding was defined many years later as saying, carbon dioxide is a pollutant. Carbon dioxide endangers public health. But that's not exactly what the endangerment finding came to as a conclusion. What they said was that carbon dioxide, when mixed with these other five well, mixed gases, called the greenhouse gases, that they contribute to climate change, not cause. Contribute how much? That's not defined. They just say that it's above a de minimis amount and that climate change endangers public health. So we will go through that process, and as we get further along in the process, then we start making conclusions and decisions as to how to go forward on this policy.

[Kate Linebaugh]

But this finding has been held up again since 2009. So why do you think things have changed yet?

[Lee Zeldin]

This is a. This is something that the EPA has not engaged in a reconsideration of at all since 2009. And also when they were going through the 2009 endangerment finding process, there was not a consideration of the impacts of what they were doing. And there has since been a reduction of emissions since 2009. There's also been advancements in American innovation since then, advancements in science. And all of These developments since 2009 obviously were not factored in when that decision was made.

[Unnamed Host]

Back then do you believe greenhouse gases should be regulated?

[Lee Zeldin]

This is the rulemaking process that I am not going to be able to prejudge. I do have opinions that I've shared publicly and some I've just reiterated, actually, in my answer to your last question. But as far as what that decision will be of the agency and of the administrator formally, that's something that I'll have to wait until we get further along in the process before I'm allowed to reach a conclusion and have a judgment and a decision.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Coming up, we'll talk about the environmental rules that Zeldin is putting in place.

[Unnamed Host]

Getting back to what you've done at the epa, you've been pushing through deregulatory actions, including rolling back rules on coal plant pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from cars. How do you square deregulation with the EPA's mission to protect human health and the environment?

[Lee Zeldin]

You know, what's amazing about your great question is that when we made our announcement just over three weeks ago, there were people who were responding to the announcement showing pictures of water quality in 1969 and saying that if you change these rules that, you know, America's land, air and water are going to go back a half a half a century. We're talking about rules that were enacted over the course of the last year or two. So what we announced just over three weeks ago, almost every single regulation that we discussed having a reconsideration of are regulations that are not from the 70s, they're not from the 80s, they're from the last 12 to 24 months.

[Unnamed Host]

Are you planning to make any new rules?

[Lee Zeldin]

Well, I just signed off on one. For the Delaware River Basin.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Last week, Zeldin finalized new water quality standards to protect fish in a stretch of the Delaware River. The EPA first proposed these standards in.

[Lee Zeldin]

2023, and this was decision for me as the administrator to make. And I could have went one in a couple of different directions. What decision did I make? It was the one to have the stricter standards put on these plants to improve water quality. So that's an example. I'm about to go to South California where there's a big issue cross boundary with Mexico in Tijuana, where they are dumping raw sewage. It's a complicated issue. For decades, raw sewage has been coming across the border into Southern California.

[Unnamed Host]

Ew, raw sewage. Unpleasant.

[Lee Zeldin]

Yes. I mean, you have a lot of people who are living just across the border. They have to see it, they have to smell it. They live with it. They don't want to have to live with it. And they've been looking for action for a long time, and I think now is the time.

[Unnamed Host]

What can you do about it?

[Lee Zeldin]

There's a few different things. One is there's funding from the USMCA, $300 million as part of that agreement to build a treatment facility, which is right now going through the design phase. There is another pot of money that is doing infrastructure projects on both the US Side and the Mexican side, while it is on the Mexican side. This is extraordinarily important for US Impacts. This is something that I've heard from the President and others. There's a lot of concern for and making sure that Mexico stops participating in this activity. So. And by the way, that's just starting to scratch the surface.

[Unnamed Host]

Are you concerned that the trade relations between the US And Mexico vis a vis the tariffs could interfere with your objectives?

[Lee Zeldin]

Well, this is not an issue that is tied up in a tariff negotiation. This is something that there actually are agreements right now that we just need Mexico to follow through on their commitments. And that's not something that we are expecting them to go back on. As a matter of fact, what my hope is is that we can get Mexico to do more. We need Mexico to do more. It's important for Americans on our side. And by the way, I was talking about going to visit Southern California, which is in Region 9 of the EPA. They did a fantastic job in the wildfire response. After the January wildfires, the President signed an executive order giving EPA 30 days to complete our phase one hazardous material removal of over 13,000 properties. And we ended up getting it done in under 30 days.

[Unnamed Host]

You brought up the wildfires in California. I mean, I think that that was a real extreme situation that sort of captures the fears that many Americans have about climate change. And that's why people feel an urgency to try to remediate it, to reverse it, as opposed to just dealing with the consequences of it.

[Lee Zeldin]

I mean, I will tell you that there's a concern as it relates to forest management, prescribed burns, being prepared with water. I was just also in Maui where they dealt with the consequences of a wildfire that quickly went over Lahaina and some other communities. As it relates to being prepared for that, being able to mitigate for that next wildfire and the damage that it can cause. There's a lot of topics that are being discussed as far as what actually caused these particular wildfires. Not just what gets lit, but how it spreads and what communities can do to be prepared.

[Unnamed Host]

I wanted to sort of circle back to your plans for the EPA itself. Given the changes happening to the federal government, it has been reported that you plan to eliminate the EPA's scientific research arm and lay off more than 1,000 scientists, including toxicologists. Is that true? And how will that impact the EPA's ability to write policy?

[Lee Zeldin]

The EPA is going to continue no matter what. In doing environmental science, we have these core statutory obligations that we must fulfill. And the environmental science work that we do here, the applied science work that we do here, are very important and one that agency employees take great pride in. Now, as I talk to individual offices, they have a desire to be able to do more science within their offices. So by having someone who is a scientist in the Office of Research and Development get moved to the Office of Chemicals or the Office of Water. Now, some people who might be very simple minded or just looking for a rhetorical edge in Congress, they might want to say that we are getting rid of science by moving a scientist from one office to another, even though they're still doing an environmental science mission. And we're going to be more thoughtful. We're thinking past all of that rhetoric. We're going to make sure we're fulfilling all of our statutory obligations. And I got to tell you, quite frankly, some of our statutory obligations, we inherited some massive backlogs because we need to be doing more science faster. And we have great talented scientists to help with that. But as far as what kind of moves might get made, we're going through the process of being very deliberate and thoughtful on it, and we have not yet reached any decisions.

[Unnamed Host]

Administrator Zeldin, thank you so much for your time today.

[Lee Zeldin]

You got it. Happy to. Take care.

[Unnamed Host]

That's all for today.

[Kate Linebaugh]

Wednesday, April 9 the Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal Special Than to Eric Kneeler for his help with this episode. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.