Today we bring you the next in our series on current and former members of Congress nominated to a cabinet post by President-elect Trump. This story was original ly published by Govtrack.us
The Senate will vote on Trump’s nominees once they are formally nominated after he takes office, but senators have already begun meeting with the expected nominees. They may also hold hearings ahead of Trump’s inauguration, to expedite the confirmation process.
Former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY1) is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to replace Michael Regan as EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) administrator. The position requires confirmation by the Senate.
Zeldin served in the House from 2015 to 2023, when he declined to run for reelection to focus on his Republican nomination for New York governor, which he lost in an election that was much closer than expected.
Both Republicans and Democrats alike describe Zeldin’s expected nomination as about rolling back environmental protections to support big business.
Bills introduced
During his eight years in Congress, he was lead sponsor of 84 bills. By GovTrack’s count, by far his most common primary issue area was “Armed Forces and National Security” at 24%. Zero were primarily related to the category “environmental protection.”
That’s because Zeldin is generally opposed to environmental protection. Indeed, he introduced at least two bills that would kill more fish.
2017’s Local Fishing Access Act would have allowed striped bass fishing in an area called the EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) by his New York district. 2015’s Fluke Fairness Act would have allowed fishers in his district to catch more fluke fish, also known as summer flounders, as New York state’s commercial sector only reeled in less than 10% of its estimated potential fluke haul. Neither bill passed.
The League of Conservation Voters gave him a lifetime 14% score. Of the 235 votes the organization marked as important environmental votes during his tenure, he cast what they deemed a “pro-environment” vote in 32.
However, those 32 votes included several where Zeldin was one of the only House Republicans doing so. Here are three examples.
Coastal and Marine Economies Protection Act
Zeldin’s 2019 vote would have banned offshore drilling off both the Atlantic and Pacific U.S. coasts.
House Democrats almost unanimously supported it by 226-5, while House Republicans almost entirely opposed it by 12-183, making Zeldin one of only a dozen members of his party to vote in favor.
The Senate never voted on the measure.
EPA funding on carbon pollution
In 2019, Zeldin voted against blocking the EPA’s implementation of new tougher standards on carbon pollution.
House Democrats voted almost unanimously in opposition by 1-233, with only Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN7) in favor. House Republicans almost entirely supported it by 177-21, making Zeldin one of less than two dozen members of his party to vote against. Due largely to Democrats, the measure failed, meaning the EPA’s rule stood.
(Interestingly, one of the few other Republican dissenters was former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s original nominee for Attorney General before dropping out, and hardly known as an environmentalist.)
Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act
Zeldin’s 2019 vote would have banned the shark fin animal parts used as a delicacy in some food items such as soups.
House Democrats almost unanimously supported it by 221-2, while House Republicans opposed it by 89-104 – pitting Zeldin against most members of his party. Though the House passed the measure, it never received a Senate vote in that Congress.
Congress ultimately enacted it three years later as a provision in the 1,772-page annual National Defense Authorization Act for 2022. Though that package passed the House overwhelmingly by both parties, Zeldin didn’t cast a vote.
What Congress is saying
“President Trump has made a strong choice in selecting [Zeldin] to lead the [EPA],” Senate Environment and Public Works Committee top Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said in a statement. “I look forward to promptly considering Rep. Zeldin’s nomination in the [committee] and to working with him to roll back regulatory overreach and unleash American energy production.”
Democrats strongly oppose the selection
“Donald Trump has chosen to reward a 2020 election denier, whose only job will be to reward corporate polluters by gutting the EPA and making our air and water dirtier,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) posted on X, formerly Twitter. “In Congress and the courts, we’ve got a fight ahead.”
In 2019, no Senate Democrats voted for Trump’s last EPA Administrator nominee Andrew Wheeler, though he was confirmed in the Republican-led chamber anyway. A similar outcome seems likely here.Jess Rifkin's writings about politics and Congress have been published in the Washington Post, Politico, Roll Call, Los Angeles Times, CNN Opinion, GovTrack, and USA Today.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.