The GOP-controlled Senate confirmed Lee Zeldin as the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday afternoon, adding a seventh nominee to President Donald Trump’s growing cabinet.
Lawmakers in the upper chamber voted 56–42, with three Democrats joining Republicans in backing his confirmation. The final vote arrived a few hours after senators invoked cloture to end their debate on the nomination.
Democrats largely oppose Zeldin because he supports Trump’s agenda to reverse the previous administration’s green energy policies.
Zeldin, a close ally of the president, will now lead the key environmental agency that regulates pollutants and enforces standards and regulations based on laws passed by Congress. The agency has the ability to establish or scrap rules that align with the Trump administration’s views on environmental protection and climate change.
Trump has repeatedly called climate change a “hoax.” Zeldin acknowledged that the environmental issue is “real” during his Senate confirmation earlier this month, although he noted U.S. emissions have been decreasing in the last few decades when questioned by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.), who urged his Democratic colleagues to vote against Zeldin.
“Senator, United States emissions have been going down over the course of the last couple of decades,” the nominee responded. “Unfortunately, there are other countries where it is not going in the same direction, and I would say that we will have never done enough to ensure that our water and our air is clean, safe and healthy. Whatever we do every day to achieve this objective, we need to wake up the next day looking for ways to do more.”
As the new EPA administrator, Zeldin will roll back the Biden administration’s strict environmental regulations and rescind some of the agency’s rules on greenhouse gas emissions. During his hearing, he did not commit to dismantling the electric vehicle mandate that required half of all new vehicles to become all-electric by 2030.
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to eliminate the EV mandate as part of the administration’s vision to unleash domestic oil and gas production instead of renewable energy sources. The president also withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, an international treaty focused on addressing climate change.
The newly-confirmed cabinet appointee pledged to “foster a collaborative culture within the agency, supporting career staff who have dedicated themselves to this mission,” he said. “I strongly believe we have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of our environment for generations to come.”
Zeldin previously served in the House as a New York Republican from 2015–23 and unsuccessfully ran against Kathy Hochul for New York governor in 2022. During his gubernatorial run, he pledged to reverse New York’s ban on fracking. In his new position, the former congressman will likely back Trump’s affinity for fossil fuels.
The GOP-controlled Senate, led by Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.), is intent on pushing through Trump’s cabinet nominees as quickly as possible. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem are some of Trump’s picks that have been confirmed so far.
Meanwhile, two of the most contentious nominees, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary and Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, are set to attend their confirmation hearings this week.