How Trump's EPA head has transformed the agency — and sided with polluters

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🗓️ 29 April 2026

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

‘New Yorker’ staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert says EPA chief Lee Zeldin has rescinded regulations, cut or eliminated departments and terminated the jobs of many scientists. Trump calls Zeldin "our secret weapon." The Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental journalist spoke with Terry Gross.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency are being chased
0:07.0	out and departments drastically reduced or eliminated. Efforts at the EPA to slow climate change
0:14.3	and reduce pollution are constantly being decreased. The head of the EPA, who is behind this
0:20.5	change of direction, is Lee Zeldon.
0:23.4	President Trump has described him as our secret weapon. Zeldon isn't known for the kind of
0:29.2	personal drama and big personality that some other members of the Trump administration are,
0:34.3	but he's been very successful in carrying out the dramatic changes in Trump's agenda
0:38.5	to undo restrictions on companies that are polluters and on the chemicals in the air and water
0:44.3	that harm our health and the environment. My guest, Elizabeth Colbert, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning
0:50.1	environmental journalist and a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her article in the current issue is
0:55.9	titled, Can the EPA Survive Lee Zeldon? She's also the author of the bestseller, The Sixth
1:02.3	Extinction. Our interview was recorded yesterday. Elizabeth Colbert, welcome back to fresh air.
1:09.0	You start your piece in The New Yorker about Zeldon by saying that last summer more than 150 staff members of the EPA sent a letter to Zeldon about their concerns about his leadership. What were their concerns?
1:21.5	Well, they listed five areas of concerns. And the first one was that he was terribly partisan, that he would use
1:30.0	his public appearances and public communications to attack the other party, sometimes by name.
1:36.6	He kept referring to these funds that had been appropriated, really, under the previous administration
1:43.0	as a scam. So they were very disturbed by that
1:47.0	level of partisanship, the notion that the EPA is supposed to be basically calling the shots,
1:52.0	you know, objectively, and that this seemed to be undermining that. It was clear that they were
1:56.8	going to dismantle what was called the Office of Research and Development, which was the EPA
2:02.1	scientific arm, which is, you know, 1,500 people who spent their lives trying to figure out
2:08.8	what environmental threats we are facing and also sort of scanning the horizon, what
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