Everybody In The EPA Hates Lee Zeldin
Agency employees publicly scold their boss for being terrible for the environment.
If you had to work for Lee Zeldin, former congressman, former loser in a New York gubernatorial election, and current Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, how long do you think you would last before telling the unpleasant little weasel to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Two weeks? Three? You’d have your resignation letter on his desk before he even figured out where the office coffee machine is?
The staff of the EPA needed about five months, from the end of January to the end of June. Then, as Popeye might have said, they had all that they could stands and they could stands no more.
On Monday, several hundred EPA employees released what they called a “Declaration of Dissent” criticizing Zeldin for, in a word, sucking. They were a little more polite about it because they are not your Wonkette, but that was the gist of the whole thing.
Zeldin’s record since he joined the EPA is about what you would expect for a sycophantic agency head working for Donald Trump. He has overseen reorganizations and large-scale layoffs. He has announced the rollback of rules governing the oil and gas industries, automobile manufacturers, tailpipe emissions, power plant emissions, clean water, the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, the Biden-Harris Electric Vehicle Mandate [which wasn’t a mandate at all! It would leave half of new vehicles in 2030 still fossil fueled! — Dok, well-actuallying], the Good Neighbor Plan that made sure there were consequences for states that sent pollution over their borders to their neighbors (takes deep breath), regulations for diesel engine emissions, manufacturing waste, the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (because Zeldin doesn’t think greenhouse gases are that bad for the environment), and handling of coal ash. For starters.
Oh, and he also ended the EPA’s Environmental Justice initiatives, so the trees are free to once again be as racist as they want.
Needless to say, politicizing the agency the way Zeldin has did not sit well with the do-gooders among the EPA rank and file who care more about questions like “Is inhaling coal ash bad for humans” and “No, asbestos really is bad for living creatures, we have decades of evidence proving the link to mesothelioma and painful early deaths, we really don’t need to bring it back.” Which we suppose is more of a comment than a question.
The employees accused Zeldin of “recklessly undermining” the EPA’s mission and said that under his leadership the EPA “will not protect communities from hazardous chemicals and unsafe drinking water, but instead will increase risks to public health and safety.” Which, duh, folks, why do you think Trump hired him in the first place? If you think you can win Lee Zeldin over with guilt or appeals to his humanity, you are barking up the wrong racist tree.
Government employees revolting against the lickspittles the Trump administration makes them work for would seem to be an everyday occurrence. But in this case, the timing is especially interesting because it comes the same week that Congress and Trump are trying to pass their Big Murder Bill, which has so many anti-environmental provisions that even Gilded Age robber barons might say, Hey, slow down here, maybe we should talk about some of these over a nice glass of laudanum.
For example, were you one of those granola-scarfing hippies who was really looking forward to the US phasing out fossil fuels while the industry builds up its renewables capacity? And were you heartened that the Biden administration made renewables a priority when it pushed the Inflation Reduction Act through Congress in 2022? Well bummer for you, because that’s the first thing that’s going to go.
From Rolling Stone:
The latest version of the bill would be particularly catastrophic for wind and solar. Republicans not only want to significantly cut tax credits for these clean energy projects, they wants impose new taxes on them for the first time. Wind and solar projects completed after 2027, for instance, will be taxed unless they can prove no Chinese components were used.
You know what would still get tax credits, though? Coal production. Even Elon Musk called that “utterly insane and destructive.”
Speaking of Musk, Republicans are also still planning on killing the tax credit for people who buy electric vehicles. Whether to continue these credits was a debate Trump claimed Musk was pissed off about losing when the two giant babies had their online slap fight when the Tesla boss mercifully left the administration a few weeks ago.
As best we can tell, the bill doesn’t even restore the green energy credits that a dozen House Republicans begged the Senate to restore after they had voted for the House bill despite it phasing them out.
All in all, the entire bill is a giant step backwards for the environment. But then, why should it be any different from literally every other action the Trump administration has taken since January?
[Stand Up for Science / Splinter / Rolling Stone]
Four out of five psychiatrists recommend Wonkette for your daily dose of laughter. The fifth guy hates fun.
Says a lot about this crowd that RFK Jr. wants to eliminate thimerosal from the few remaining vaccines that still have it because it contains trace amounts of ethylmercury, while Zeldin wants to let power plants spew tar more dangerous straight mercury into the atmosphere, where it can actually get into the food chain.
Oof. I just yesterday received an email from one of my mother’s classmates, sort of an aunt figure. She wrote about her sister, well past retirement age, who is still working in HR at the EPA because she feels she needs to be there as support as people are abused and laid off. Morale is low, low. Even the local branches hate that mofo.