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Zeldin Testifies at the Senate EPW FY2026 EPA Budget Hearing, May 21, 2025

May 21, 2025 · The Union Herald · 1:46:32

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

What happened

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin testified on the EPA’s proposed fiscal year 2026 budget before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on May 21, 2025, in The Union Herald’s carry of the hearing. Chair Shelley Moore Capito welcomed him by applauding, as she put it, his “aggressive efforts to undo the previous administration’s regulatory overreach” and his work rescinding the Biden Clean Power Plan 2.0 rule, while returning the EPA to its core mission of protecting air, land, and water, as she stated it in her opening.

Zeldin’s opening statement presented the first-100-days record he carried through the week’s hearings — 17 states visited, the Los Angeles wildfire cleanup, PFAS steps, 21 Superfund sites advanced, and the Waters of the United States revision, as he stated them. In questioning, Senator Adam Schiff pushed the Administrator on the EPA’s cancellation of congressionally appropriated grants, and Zeldin committed to provide the committee documentation of the individualized review of the canceled grants, as Senator Schiff’s office reported from the hearing.

Why it matters

EPW is Zeldin’s authorizing committee in the Senate — the committee that confirmed him — and this hearing closes the FY2026 budget week with both the chairman’s endorsement of the deregulation program and a documented commitment, extracted under questioning, on the grant cancellations that became the EPA’s most litigated stewardship fight.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the fiscal year 2026 EPA budget Zeldin defended on May 21, 2025, and his commitment at the hearing to provide the committee documentation of the individualized review of canceled grants, as Senator Schiff’s office reported it. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: The Union Herald, “Senate Hearing on FY 2026 Budget for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency” (Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, May 21, 2025, embedded above; remarks as delivered at the hearing); Sen. Adam Schiff’s office, release on the grant-documentation commitment (May 2025).