This Trump official’s 'bland' personality masks a dark agenda

Many of the MAGA firebrands President Donald Trump has appointed during his second presidency are known for being combative and highly performative, including Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, White House adviser Steven Miller, former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, and ex-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin, in contrast, is much more low-key.

But The New Republic's Liza Featherstone, in an article published on April 13, argues that Zeldin's "bland" personality doesn't make him any less "dangerous."

"Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin, reportedly being considered to replace Pam Bondi as attorney general, is not the most polarizing member of the Trump Administration — not by a long shot," Featherstone explains. "Yet he's one of the most dangerous. In contrast to the mutant plastic visage of Kristi Noem, you probably can't call up a visual mental image of Zeldin's eminently forgettable face. It's also hard to call to mind any memorable utterances by Zeldin. That's an achievement in a crowd that normally will not shut up."

Featherstone continues, "Consider, for example, the luridly reactionary and genocidal statements of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who, last month, called wartime rules of engagement 'stupid' and 'politically correct,' and recently reposted a video of the founding pastor of his church calling for the repeal of the 19th Amendment. Or consider Steven Miller, who baselessly accused ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) murder victim Alex Pretti of being a terrorist — a charge he lobs against left-leaning protesters all the time. Or take Trump himself, who gleefully bragged that he was going to destroy Iranian civilization this week and that it wouldn't be a war crime because Iranians are 'animals.'"

According to Featherstone, however, Zeldin's more low-key personality "masks a truly extreme anti-environmental record at the EPA."

"Last Thursday, Zeldin appeared at a Heartland Institute conference of anti-environmental, pro-polluter lobbyists and activists who have been working for years to dismantle climate regulations," Featherstone writes. "Before Zeldin took office, this group would have been considered quite fringe…. He has cut billions of dollars from climate grants the Biden Administration had awarded, eviscerated pollution rules and enforcement capacity, and perhaps most significantly, wiped out the legal basis of much climate regulation: the 2009 endangerment finding, which says that greenhouse gases can be regulated because they imperil human life and health….. No other EPA head has ever done as much damage as he has, undoing climate progress and other environmental regulations."