US public health groups urge firing of EPA boss Zeldin, saying he ‘brazenly betrayed’ agency | US Environmental Protection Agency

More than 160 environmental and public health organizations called Tuesday for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin to resign or be fired.

“No [EPA] “The administrator in history – Democrat or Republican – has so brazenly betrayed the core mission of the agency,” the groups wrote in an open letter. “The EPA’s primary goal is to protect human health and the environment. With Administrator Lee Zeldin at the helm, the EPA has abandoned its mission, creating damage that will take decades to repair.

Under Zeldin, the EPA rolled back or weakened dozens of environmental protections aimed at slowing the climate crisis, protecting clean air and water, and protecting the health of Americans.

“He has slashed vital funding, gutted agency staff, and rigged the system to prioritize polluting companies, to the detriment of our health,” the letter continues.

The Guardian has contacted the EPA for comment.

Organized by environmental advocacy groups Climate Action Campaign and Moms Clean Air Force, the letter was signed by 163 local and national organizations, including consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen, green groups Sierra Club and Earthjustice, environmental justice organizations GreenRoots and GreenLatinos, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, a health advocacy group.

“The public deserves an EPA administrator who will meet the challenge of the climate crisis and pollution from fossil fuels and toxic substances head-on with proven policy solutions, and who will not actively serve as an agent of destruction beholden to the whims of oil, gas and chemical industry executives and an authoritarian, anti-science U.S. president,” said Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a science rights organization that signed the letter.

The missive follows a January petition signed by leaders of the Make America Healthy Again movement led by Robert F Kennedy Jr, which called for Zeldin’s firing due to his environmental setbacks. (In the weeks that followed, Zeldin reportedly attended a Maha-focused holiday party, invited the movement’s supporters to a meeting at EPA headquarters, and declared that the agency would adopt a “Maha agenda.”) Democratic and progressive lawmakers have criticized his leadership.

Zeldin also faced harsh criticism from current and former EPA staff, who in June signed the EPA’s “Statement of Dissent” that harshly criticized his treatment of the agency’s science programs and workers. Some staff members were suspended or fired for signing the latter, although agency officials believed their behavior did not violate ethics rules, E&E News reported this month.

Brigit Hirsch, an EPA spokesperson, told the publication that the agency “has a zero-tolerance policy toward career bureaucrats who illegally undermine, sabotage and undermine the Administration’s agenda as voted on by the great citizens of this country.”

The Trump administration has defended its unprecedented rollback of regulations, arguing it can protect the environment while boosting industry.

Next month, Zeldin will be the keynote speaker at a climate-focused conference in Washington, DC, hosted by the Heartland Institute. The right-wing organization has drawn on funding from companies such as ExxonMobil and wealthy US Republican donors, and it rejects the scientific consensus that the climate crisis is urgent and man-made.