The Brute, The Loyalist, and The Arsonists
Trump’s picks say they want to “traumatize” EPA, but most voters who put Trump in office are not on board
The fight is on to save EPA.
As Trump fills out his lineup of top advisors and political appointees, the walls are closing in on the agency charged with protecting public health, clean air, and clean water. Before we meet The Brute, The Loyalist, and The Arsonists who plan to bring EPA to its knees, let’s start with some encouraging news.
Say What?!
Most Trump voters oppose efforts to weaken EPA. This bears repeating. More Trump voters want to see EPA strengthened than weakened, and EPA’s funding increased rather than decreased. The public has not given Trump a mandate for sweeping change at EPA.
The Environmental Protection Network, an association of hundreds of former EPA officials, commissioned a nationwide post-election poll of 1,000 voters. The poll results are here. A few highlights:
76% of Trump voters and 86% of all voters oppose attempts to weaken EPA.Opposition is notably high among voting blocks that shifted toward Republicans in the 2024 election, including young voters (91%), Latino voters (90%), suburban voters (87%), and independent voters (85%).
64% of Trump voters and 88% of all voters are concerned that Trump will turn EPA over to someone who will “put the interests of polluting corporations ahead of protecting clean water, clean air, and public health.”
81% of Trump voters and 88% of all voters want Congress to increase EPA funding or keep funding steady.
Distraction and Deception
Will any of this stop Trump and his appointees from trying to gut EPA? No. But it will push them to rely heavily on distraction and deception to hide the full extent of their efforts.
Trump’s statement when he announced Lee Zeldin as the pick for EPA administrator is a case in point:
Zeldin 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, including the cleanest air and water on the planet.”
While divorced from reality, “maintaining the highest environmental standards” is a core part of Trump’s message. His team knows the public wants EPA to be on the job. They also think they can hide the full extent of their demolition with platitudes about clean air and water.
Trump Is Taking a Different Approach to Crush EPA
Under Trump 45, EPA withstood the most radical attempts to gut the agency. Trump’s first pick to head the agency, Scott Pruitt, blundered from scandal to scandal before resigning in disgrace. Trump’s EPA lost or retreated from more than 100 court cases challenging its actions. And Congress flatly rejected Trump’s plans to deeply slash EPA’s budget.
Trump’s appointments this time around reveal a different approach. Trump is determined to gut EPA from the White House itself, using the full force of his presidency, rather than rely on a single lieutenant. In particular, he is betting on The Brute, The Loyalist, and The Arsonists to get the job done.
The Brute: “Put Them in Trauma”
Meet The Brute, Russel Vought, shown here in a recently uncovered video of a private speech from earlier this year where he said he wanted to “traumatize” EPA staff. Watch for yourself here.
CBS News is reporting that Trump has picked Russel Vought, a key Project 2025 architect, to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Here’s the transcript from the above video clip, which was uncovered by ProPublica and Documented:
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.”
Using his significant authority as OMB Director, Vought will take charge of ensuring that EPA carries out the president’s wishes and try to secure the budget cuts that Trump 45 was denied.
The Loyalist
Meet The Loyalist, Lee Zeldin, pictured here next to Trump and Vance at the Republican convention.
Zeldin will be the man on the other end of the phone taking orders from Vought. Trump picked Zeldin to lead EPA because he is a loyalist who staunchly defended Trump during impeachment probes and voted against certifying the 2020 election.
There’s nothing in Zeldin’s record to suggest that he will ever say no.
The Arsonists
Meet The Arsonists, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
This week they published their “DOGE Plan to Reform Government” in the Wall Street Journal. DOGE refers to the “Department of Government Efficiency.”
Efficiency / noun / ef·fi·cien·cy: Political euphemism for “scorched earth”
According to the DOGE plan, Musk and Ramaswamy plan to:
Hire a team of “crusaders” who will not work for the government, but will work closely with The Brute at OMB.
Bypass Congress completely and do everything by executive fiat.
Direct staff embedded in EPA and other agencies to use AI to identify a list of “thousands” of regulations that Trump will stop enforcing with a stroke of his pen.
Direct EPA and other agencies to achieve specific “mass head-count reduction” targets.
In short, they want to burn EPA down.
Books will be written about the flaws of this plan. Fortunately for all of us who breathe air and drink water, EPA’s work over the past half-century has been guided by comprehensive laws passed by Congress that can’t be undone with a stroke of the pen. Congress has repeatedly turned aside efforts to weaken these laws because their life-saving benefits have far outweighed their costs to polluters.
There isn’t a single environmental law that cedes final authority over America’s environmental and public health safeguards to unaccountable “crusaders.” Regulatory revisions must make their way through the courts, and Congress has the power of the purse. Neither the courts nor Congress are likely to tolerate the kind of shortcuts Musk and Ramaswamy envision.
When EPA Public Health Protections Are Delayed, People Suffer from Avoidable Asthma Attacks, Lung Disease, and Heart Disease
Even though Trump’s prior attempts to roll back 100 environmental and public health rules were ultimately overturned in the courts or undone by Biden, they nevertheless succeeded in delaying many life-saving protections for years.
This time, the stakes are even higher. Trump’s team is targeting EPA rules finalized under Biden that will prevent more than 100 million asthma attacks and save more than 200,000 lives.
The Brute, The Loyalist, and The Arsonists are eager to give it another go. Even though their efforts can likewise be undone, that will be little consolation to the families who will suffer in the interim from avoidable asthma attacks, lung disease, and heart disease.
Note: Climate Insider is an independent publication by Jeremy Symons. The opinions are my own and do not represent the views of any organization.