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Zeldin Testifies at His Senate EPW Confirmation Hearing, Jan. 16, 2025

January 16, 2025 · PBS NewsHour · 3:15:56

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Lee Zeldin testified at his confirmation hearing for Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on January 16, 2025, in PBS NewsHour’s live carry of the hearing. Committee Chair Shelley Moore Capito opened the committee’s first hearing of the 119th Congress, and Senator John Barrasso introduced the nominee, as the hearing record shows.

In his opening statement, Zeldin described the EPA’s mission as, in his words, “simple but essential: to protect human health and the environment,” and said the agency must “harness the greatness of American innovation with the greatness of American conservation and environmental stewardship” — protecting the environment while also protecting the economy, as he stated it. He pledged that, if confirmed, he would enthusiastically uphold the EPA’s mission, and framed the goal as a country where every child can thrive “with clean air, clean water and boundless opportunity,” as he put it. Senators questioned him across the day on climate policy, fossil fuels, and the agency’s legal obligations, as the hearing record shows.

Why it matters

The hearing is the founding statement of Zeldin’s tenure: the nominee who would run the administration’s deregulatory program introduced himself on a both-and platform — environmental protection and economic protection together, under the law as Congress wrote it. The Senate confirmed him on January 29, 2025, by a vote of 56–42, and the program he has since executed traces back to the commitments he made in this room.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Zeldin’s confirmation pledges as he stated them on January 16, 2025 — uphold the EPA’s mission of protecting human health and the environment while protecting the economy, and follow the law as Congress wrote it. Flagged for the scoreboard editor as promise-record material; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: PBS NewsHour, “WATCH LIVE: Lee Zeldin testifies at Senate confirmation hearing for EPA administrator” (Jan. 16, 2025, live carry, embedded above; opening statement as delivered by Mr. Zeldin). Confirmation vote per the Senate record carried in this site’s chronicle (Jan. 29, 2025, 56–42).