All Things with Kim Strassel: Fighting Government Waste at the EPA

WSJ Opinion: Potomac Watch

The Wall Street Journal

Society & Culture, News

4 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How is Donald Trump's much-discussed Department of Government Efficiency working in practice? In this episode of All Things, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin explains his agency's partnership with DOGE and the process by which they are identifying waste and fraud to make the federal government more accountable. What grants or programs are being cut, and why? What's happening to the EPA workforce? How much internal "resistance" is there to these goals? And how does EPA balance its mission of "clean air, land and water for every American" with the goal of a smaller government? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	We have oil and gas. The royalties that we get helps our family, helps our children to go to school.
0:06.8	America's oil and natural gas strengthens communities. Learn more at lightsonenergy.org, paid for by
0:13.3	the American Petroleum Institute. From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is All Things with Kim
0:19.4	Strassel, a Potomac Watch podcast. Welcome to All Things with Kim Strassel, a Potomac Watch podcast. Welcome to All Things
0:23.3	with Kim Strassel. It is my profound pleasure to sit down this week with a key player in Trump's
0:30.0	Doge and Energy and Environment Agenda. And that would be Lee Zeldon, the new head of the Environmental
0:36.2	Protection Agency.
0:39.0	There's so much to talk about.
0:40.7	Lee, thank you for joining us this week.
0:41.4	You got it, Kim.
0:42.1	It's great to be with you.
0:47.8	Former member from New York and Congress confirmed at the end of January at EPA. And here's what I want to start with, because I think people just have so many questions about this.
0:52.7	And that is doges on everyone's mind.
0:55.5	You've been putting out regular updates on the work you are doing, which you note is in
1:01.0	partnership with Doge. And I think a lot of people have questions about how that works in practice.
1:07.3	When you are going through these line item projects and deciding what to keep, what to change,
1:13.1	how does that work in terms of Doge people, your people, et cetera?
1:17.7	It's really been a partnership.
1:19.2	Everyone inside of the building at EPA, all of the personnel here at EPA are employees
1:25.7	of the agency.
1:27.1	We don't have any outside people here
1:29.6	inside of the building. So we're working with employees internally to EPA in deciding where
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Wall Street Journal, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Wall Street Journal and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.