WASHINGTON — Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin is rolling out a massive five-pillar initiative for his first 100 days in the role, he told Breitbart News exclusively in a lengthy interview at EPA headquarters in downtown Washington, DC, late last week.
“President Trump earned a mandate last November when the American people all across this country elected him to have a term that I believe will be the greatest four years in American history,” Zeldin told Breitbart News in his cavernous office inside the William Jefferson Clinton Building just blocks from the White House.
“A lot of longtime Democratic voters decided to vote Republican for the first time and to vote for President Trump because their party had abandoned them and they felt disenfranchised,” he said. “President Trump has pledged to do everything in his power to unleash American prosperity throughout this country and we have an important role to play to make sure the EPA is accomplishing its mission in a manner that doesn’t lose sight over the strong desire by the American public to unleash American prosperity. In order to do so, we need to become energy-dominant. We need to bring back American auto jobs. We have to make the United States the AI capital of the world. We need to pursue permitting reform that can allow more investment into the American economy. The EPA has to do its part here. Our mission here at the EPA is to protect human health and the environment. That mission absolutely can be accomplished while tapping into American innovation, creating jobs, and being accountable to the public and to Congress. We want to hit the ground running.”
Zeldin continued, “Just before you came in here, we had a long meeting about getting agency employees back into the office. President Trump had a directive that the EPA takes seriously that those who had been remote working and teleworking are doing everything possible to get back in the office as quickly as they can. The EPA is going to aggressively pursue an agenda powering the Great American Comeback. That is our agenda we wanted to announce with you — that’s what we call it, that’s our purpose, and it’s what will keep us up at night. EPA wants to help power that Great American Comeback. President Trump, as the leader of our country and the great American people, has earned that mandate. It’s up to the EPA to ensure we’re doing our part to make sure we deliver on that.”
Zeldin is affectionately known in America First activist circles as “the Legend of Zeldin,” a play on the name of the classic video game the Legend of Zelda. He earned the nickname when he was a rank-and-file GOP U.S. House member from New York, when he was serving on the House Intelligence Committee and tearing up its then-chairman Democrat Adam Schiff’s plot to impeach President Donald Trump in his first term. While Schiff survived that madness and is now in the U.S. Senate from California, Zeldin is thriving even more. After a run for governor in New York in 2022 where he nearly toppled Democrat Kathy Hochul, he served as one of the top campaign surrogates for Trump’s 2024 comeback bid. Now, Zeldin is back at Trump’s side as now the administrator for the nation’s premiere environmental agency, the EPA, helping the president take on one of the most entrenched bureaucracies in a capital city full of them.
Zeldin and his team are exclusively announcing this new initiative — titled “Powering the Great American Comeback” — here on Breitbart News. The initiative has five major pillars. The first is pushing for “Clean Air, Land, and Water for Every American.” The second is to “Restore American Energy Dominance,” and the third is for “Permitting Reform, Cooperative Federalism, and Cross-Agency Partnership.” The fourth pillar is to “Make the United States the Artificial Intelligence Capital of the World,” and the fifth is “Protecting and Bringing Back American Auto Jobs.”
Zeldin said it is time for the EPA to return to its core mission of conservation — which he argued is a core conservative principle — and ditch the leftist environmentalist radicalism that has dominated in the past.
“President Trump has been very outspoken about his desire for Americans to be able to access clean air and clean water. We want air, land, water to be cleaner, safer, healthier,” Zeldin said. “That is our goal. That is our first pillar. Conservation has long been an important principle that conservatives and Republicans have been very proud of. When I was in the House, I was part of an effort to pass out of the House and Senate the Great American Outdoors Act. Conservation is going to continue to be a highest priority of conservatives and that includes advocacy from hunters, from fisherman, and so many more who care about our environment. In the name of climate change, Democrats during the Biden administration wasted tax dollars in a way that was inexcusable, unjustifiable, and illegitimate. We don’t want to waste a penny. It is important that we are pursuing this agenda of having cleaner air, land, and water without wasting any tax dollars at all. There has been talk through the years about how the world was imminently about to end because of climate change, and in the name of that threat there was a push to do some crazy things.”
The timelines of those predictions of “climate change” ending the world have “come and gone,” Zeldin said, and the world is still here.
“That’s what President Trump had spoken about so often,” Zeldin said. “When I heard the president talk about a climate change hoax, he would also talk about how important it is to him that Americans have clean air and clean water. What he expressed as a concern was, in the name of climate change, that politicians in Washington, DC, were willing to bankrupt our economy and that people who were struggling to make ends meet would lose the ability to heat their homes, and that Americans who want to be able to go out and purchase a gas-powered vehicle would have that option denied to them by the government. President Trump has proven that he’s not somebody willing to sit on the sidelines. When he sees Americans in need and not being properly represented and not being properly led, he will step away from an easy lifestyle and take on all of the risk and all the bullets and all the arrows and he will eagerly lead that charge to restore the Great American Comeback. We just want to do our part at the EPA here.”
Zeldin argues that that first pillar — cleaner air, water, and land — is not at odds with the second, which is to boost energy production in the U.S.
“Emissions went down during the [first] Trump presidency,” Zeldin said. “Energy that gets produced here in America taps into innovation and is far cleaner than energy produced overseas. Restoring energy dominance is not just an economic goal and not just a national security goal, but I also believe it’s best for the environment because here in America we tap into our domestic energy supply in ways that are much better for the environment than other nations across the world do it. We do it better here.”
Permitting reform, the third pillar in the plan, is key too, he said.
“The president has made a focus of ensuring the there is more reliability, consistency, and timeliness in order to secure a permit to make a massive investment in the United States,” Zeldin said. “EPA wants to help do our part to bring down that timeline, to increase consistency and reliability, and to make sure it doesn’t take as long to get a permit or to be able to make that investment.”
The fourth pillar, making the U.S. the world’s AI capital, is something Zeldin said is important to position the U.S. better on the world stage, particularly when it comes to confronting China.
“As far as AI, the United States of America should be the AI capital of the world,” Zeldin said. “There are some people in America who are scared of AI and they want us to go slower. That is absolutely not an option. The slower America goes in this race to become the AI capital of the world the more certainty and risk exists that nations like China are going to eat our lunch. President Trump has made it clear going back to his first term and even in video clips from many, many years before he ever ran for office that he has zero tolerance whatsoever to have a nation like China ever eat our lunch. We have to become the AI capital of the world, and we have to do it better, smarter, and quicker than nations like China.”
When it comes to the fifth pillar, bringing back American auto jobs, Zeldin said the obsession the radical left had with electric vehicles over gas-powered vehicles is over. He said, under his leadership, the EPA will focus on allowing consumers a choice: If they want an electric vehicle, they can get one, but if they want a gas-powered vehicle, they can get one of those too.
“Couple things — one is there is a big research mission in Ann Arbor that is part of EPA. It is important that the science, data, research, coming from that important work doesn’t yield results that are skewed by ideology and being a zealot. We don’t want any left-wing bias to be inserted into science and research, and we want to work closely with American auto companies to ensure that they have the tools to be successful, keep costs down, and create jobs — bring back jobs,” Zeldin said when asked about the fifth pillar of his plan.
“As far as rule making goes, it is important that I as administrator follow my obligations under the law and respect the rule of law,” he continued. “Understanding the Administrative Procedures Act, I don’t prejudge outcomes before we get to that part of the process of changing a rule. I will say that there were rules that were enacted over the course of the last administration that I’ve heard a lot of feedback on that have greatly impacted the American auto industry in a very negative way and greatly impacted the American consumer in a very negative way. And I believe in choice. I believe in an energy strategy that allows an American to choose a gas-powered vehicle if they want one. If they want to go out and get an electric vehicle, they can do that too. But in the spirit of allowing one American to be able to access an electric vehicle they want, we shouldn’t be denying every other American on that street the ability to pull a gas-powered vehicle into their driveway if that’s what they prefer. We respect choice and optionality in the American auto industry has a robust history they should be proud of and EPA has an important role to play to make them stronger.”
Asked if he will be out front and center pushing these principles in a highly visible way he has long been known for, Zeldin told Breitbart News: “Absolutely.”
“Every day we want to work harder than the last,” Zeldin said. “I’m hoping that next week I also have the opportunity to get on the ground in LA, and possibly even western North Carolina if that can work out. We want the American public to be able to count on the EPA so that when disaster strikes and the EPA is called upon, that we bring a level of reliability and exceptionalism that the American public is exceptionally proud of.”
Zeldin accompanied Vice President JD Vance on Monday to East Palestine, Ohio, to tour the town devastated by a chemical-laden train derailment two years ago. Zeldin had nothing but platitudes for Vance’s leadership, first in the U.S. Senate and now in the White House, on this front.
“Then-Sen. Vance was at the tip of the spear the moment the train derailment happened he led the way,” Zeldin said. “He proved quickly he was the right choice when he became the junior senator from Ohio and his continued leadership on this issue proves he was the right choice to become our nation’s now-vice president. His leadership showed that, when disaster strikes, it’s important for an elected official to be present and at that site instantly. People who might live in a community who voted against you in the last election start realizing that they missed an opportunity, but it’s not too late to correct wrongs when you identify that talent and that leadership as what happened in the East Palestine community. JD Vance was first on the scene, consistently on the scene, and even though he is now Vice President of the United States, he has not forgotten where he came from. That’s why now immediately after he’s sworn into office, he’s going right back now to East Palestine because he hasn’t forgotten.”
And later this week, Zeldin is set to visit Los Angeles, California, where wildfires have completely upended the local community burning thousands of homes and leaving wide-scale devastation in their wake. The EPA, he said, is engaged in the largest cleanup operation in the agency’s history there, and officials at the EPA told Breitbart News that well over a thousand employees are on the ground leading the cleanup operations. They have already removed at least 80 electric vehicles and built energy storage systems and conducted reconnaissance at more than 6,000 properties so far.
“EPA is undertaking the largest cleanup of hazardous materials in the history of the agency,” Zeldin said. “We’re not going to wait days or weeks or months to ramp up. We’ve done it already. We’ll have a thousand people on the ground this weekend. This morning, we started off the day — it was 7:15 a.m. on the West Coast — and there was a massive team from California on a video call with us here in the conference room to make sure we are collaborating as closely as possible and to make sure they have all the resources they need and to make sure we are assisting them in any way that we can. We are very proud of the thousands of properties they have already worked through inspecting to help residents. Our role there is one that we’re proud of — any residents who want to return to their property, we are encouraging them that if they come across a lithium ion battery for example that they call the EPA hotline and bring us in to help. We’re working with the local government and we’re working with local residents, and we won’t slow down until the job gets done.”
“President Trump said he wanted our work to be done there with phase one within 30 days and we are going to do everything in our power to make sure we are able to hit that goal,” Zeldin said. “Phase one is the EPA assisting with the cleanup of hazardous material, and phase two is the work that will get done by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Trump administration is tackling this head on in a way that the EPA couldn’t possibly be any prouder to be a part of and I would have to give a special shoutout to Ric Grenell who is on the ground there and has been providing excellent support and feedback of what he’s hearing. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the men and women who are working extraordinarily long days right now to make sure that President Trump’s timeline is met.”
One of the first big tasks Zeldin is setting out to accomplish is getting EPA workers back to work in person after years of teleworking and remote working during former President Joe Biden’s administration. In fact, as mentioned above, just before he sat down with Breitbart News in his office, Zeldin was meeting with lawyers for the EPA on how to get federal workers to comply with Trump’s order that everyone needs to come back to work in person.
For a huge federal building, the place seemed largely empty when Breitbart News went in early Friday afternoon. It was Zeldin’s second full day in the job, and he told Breitbart News that many federal workers were not there.
“Between remote working and teleworking, it feels like it’s just about everybody,” Zeldin said when asked just how many EPA employees had been not working in person when he came in. “There are people who have been coming into the office five days a week and God bless them, but that appears to be very rare before President Trump was sworn into office. We have to reverse that.”
He intends to end that practice, and bring everybody back in person. “We are meeting — we just had a meeting that included our attorneys to continue to work out our options on how to deliver on President Trump’s directive as soon as humanly possible,” he said.
The reason why workers need to be there in person, he said, is because the EPA is a hands-on job and requires collaboration.
“The EPA has to be as productive as possible. We have to collaborate and deliver. We can’t do that with everybody working from home,” Zeldin said. “Many of the highest profile issues across the country right now have communities looking to the EPA for help. The removal of hazardous material in L.A. after the fires. There is a heavy reliance on local government to get safe drinking water back into residential properties, and EPA is on the ground offering to assist. I’m traveling as you know with our great vice president to East Palestine for the anniversary. EPA has played an important role on the ground to assist. In western North Carolina, same thing. You can’t respond from home. The needs on the ground in these communities that have been impacted require EPA to be present, to show up. There is a lot of work for us to do here at headquarters — there is a lot of feedback coming in from members of Congress and the public, of advocacy, saying that the Biden administration set back a particular community or industry in a way that harmed the American economy. We have heard all of this feedback and we want to do whatever we can to reverse any damage that was done.”
Zeldin also told Breitbart News he intends to get to the bottom of a Biden appointee during there transition post-election getting caught on camera saying the Biden administration was throwing money away. The employee, caught in a Project Veritas video, said they were throwing gold bars off the edge of the Titanic.
“I would add that tens of billions of dollars went out the door during the Biden administration that we want accountability for,” Zeldin said. “Between the time President Trump was elected and sworn in, a Biden political appointee was on video talking about how here at the EPA they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic. He says it four or five times in this Project Veritas video, even saying that there was a desire among the Biden political appointees to give out the final billions of dollars with an eye toward getting jobs at the recipient NGOs. Gold bars are tax dollars, and off the Titanic means they know they are wasting those tax dollars. I want to have an ability to be able to appear before Congress and answer all these outstanding questions about all these dollars that went out during the Biden administration that the Biden administration themselves referred to as tossing gold bars off the Titanic. You can’t do everything that the American public is demanding of the EPA by remote working and teleworking. We have to be in the office, productive, collaborative, and delivering.”