Trump Picks New EPA Head Guaranteed to Destroy the Environment

President-elect Donald Trump has selected an almost cartoonishly evil man to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

Trump said he will nominate former Republican House member and failed New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin for the next administrator of the EPA. And Zeldin has gleefully accepted the role.

“Lee, with a very strong legal background, has been a true fighter for America First policies,” Trump said in a statement posted to Truth Social Monday. “He will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards.”

“It is an honor to join President Trump’s Cabinet,” Zeldin posted on X in reply. “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

If confirmed by the Senate, Zeldin would be an absolute disaster for the environment. A staunch climate denier, Zeldin wants to make fracking and offshore drilling easier and supports new pipeline construction. He is also one of Trump’s biggest fans, refusing to admit he lost the 2020 election—and so he’s all but guaranteed to do Trump’s bidding.

Zeldin has made his pro-business vision for the EPA crystal clear. “So day one and the first 100 days, we have the opportunity to roll back regulations that are forcing businesses to be able to struggle,” Zeldin said on Fox News Monday, shortly after news of his pick broke. “They’re forced to cut costs internally, they are moving overseas altogether to be able to bolster liquidity in the American economy, where businesses strive to grow, expand here and have the ability to export what they produce, as opposed to exporting their jobs in the company—the companies themselves.”

Rest assured, this EPA head won’t be protecting anything.

January 6 protesters are learning the hard way that their fearless leader plays by a different set of rules than they do.

The Justice Department on Monday rejected requests from several January 6 defendants who tried to have their cases tossed out, on the grounds that special counsel Jack Smith paused his prosecution of President-elect Trump’s incendiary actions on January 6 after his election win.

“The defendant’s citation to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s motion to vacate a briefing schedule in the matter of United States v. Trump … is inapposite,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Isia Jasiewicz wrote in acknowledgment of a defendant’s extension request.

“That motion refers to the ‘unprecedented circumstance’ of a criminal defendant being ‘expected to be certified as President-elect on January 6, 2025, and inaugurated on January 20, 2025.’ The need to ‘determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy,’ is not similarly implicated in this case, where the defendant is a private citizen.”

January 6 defense attorneys have called foul on their cases, noting the inconsistencies in how the special counsel is handling January 6 for the president-elect compared to his followers. But just because you and Trump both committed crimes on the same day doesn’t mean you get to be prosecuted in the same way. At least for the remaining few months that Merrick Garland is still in charge of the Justice Department.

Israel’s top leadership has indicated that they see Donald Trump’s forthcoming administration as a free license to settle Palestine.

In a statement celebrating Trump’s win, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced on Monday that “the time has come” to extend Israeli law over the occupied West Bank, reported The Washington Post.

Smotrich, himself a settler who also wields a defense ministry supervisory role overseeing the West Bank and settlements, added that he hoped the new administration would recognize the Israeli sovereignty push, and that the “only way to remove” the “threat” of a Palestinian state would be to force sovereignty “over the entire settlements in Judea and Samaria,” referring to the West Bank by its biblical name.

Earlier on Monday, the nation’s new foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, said that the government had not yet made a decision about annexing the West Bank, but explained that the issue had been discussed with Trump during his first term and that it would be “discussed again with our friends in Washington” if relevant, reported CNN.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, when it claimed the Palestinian territory from Jordan. Since then, it has increasingly encroached on the land, expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank (which violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention) despite decades of peace agreements with Palestine.

More than 43,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, with an additional 102,000 people injured in the conflict, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. A report by the United Nations Human Rights Office, published last week, found that close to 70 percent of those killed were women and children, with 5- to 9-year-old children comprising the majority of the dead. Roughly 80 percent of the victims were killed in residential buildings or similar housing.

With Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on his way out, a MAGA power play amid the fight for Senate leadership is starting to rub some Republicans the wrong way.

After 17 years in the hot seat, McConnell is expected to exit his post at the top of Senate Republican leadership on Wednesday, ending his run as the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history.

At the top of the billing to replace the 82-year-old are South Dakota Senator John Thune and Texas Senator John Cornyn, two establishment conservatives and longtime McConnell allies who have not always seen eye to eye with the president-elect.

Meanwhile, a gamut of Trump’s key allies, including Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, and Charlie Kirk, are aggressively lobbying for Florida Senator Rick Scott to take the helm. (Trump, notably, has so far avoided endorsing any of the contenders.) But the overzealous pressure campaign—which is also being pushed along by some far-right social media influencers and their harassment tactics—is on the verge of combusting, according to Politico.

That’s because most of the Senate Republican conference won’t have to face reelection until 2028 or later. On top of that, the vote is by secret ballot, ensuring that no one—from their constituents to MAGA’s top brass—will know if they voted for or against Trump’s candidate.

“Senators do not take kindly to having an army of social media trolls attack them,” one unnamed aide told Politico on Sunday, noting that the effort was only “pissing off senators whose votes Rick needs” to win.

Still, all three candidates passed a Trumpian litmus test Sunday night, quickly bending the knee to the chief Republican’s unusual demand that they unequivocally agree to recess appointments and thwart the appointment of Democratic judges.

“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner,” Trump posted on X on Sunday. “Sometimes the votes can take two years, or more. This is what they did four years ago, and we cannot let it happen again. We need positions filled IMMEDIATELY!”

Lawyers at the Justice Department just got a sinister warning about a second term under President Donald Trump.

Mark Paoletta, a former Trump administration member and conservative think-tank fellow working on Trump’s transition, spelled out the upcoming agenda in a lengthy X post on Monday. He named mass deportations, pardoning January 6 insurrectionists, and declaring war on transgender children as the top priorities. And he made sure to tell any DOJ lawyers who may have qualms about that to fall in line.

“DOJ career employees do not set the agenda. In fact, they are required to help implement this agenda. Hopefully, they will be as committed to helping President Trump implement his agenda as they did for President Biden,” Paoletta wrote. “If these career DOJ employees won’t implement President Trump’s program in good faith, they should leave. Those employees who engage in so-called ‘resistance’ against the duly-elected President’s lawful agenda would be subverting American democracy. Finally, those that take such actions would be subject to disciplinary measures, including termination.”

This is yet another dark signal of authoritarian backsliding, as Trump is primed to strong-arm the federal government into doing his bidding or risk getting fired. The former president has doubled down relentlessly on his threat to take down “the enemy within,” a.k.a. anyone he feels like attacking. There are rough waters on the horizon for any federal employee who doesn’t want to conform.