Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin’s appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday turned contentious quickly, as he tried his best to deflect and bluster through hard questions about his tenure.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York pressed Zeldin about a meeting he had with pesticide maker Bayer’s CEO—something he at first denied—before being confronted with emails from his own office, raising questions about his decision to revoke key climate findings and roll back regulations on forever chemicals.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Now Secretary Kennedy was here a couple of weeks ago. and when he was asked about glyphosate and the rollbacks against protections against toxic chemicals, he said that we would “have to ask Lee Zeldin about that.” So you’re here before us today. Administrator Zelden, have you ever participated in a meeting with Bayer where you discussed the legal or litigation issues that the company was facing?
Lee Zeldin: No, I never did.
Ocasio-Cortez: Okay, I have—
Zeldin: —My, my meeting with them was very brief and that topic did not come up.
[…]Ocasio-Cortez: We have documentation here, emails from your senior adviser for agriculture and rural affairs saying that you were meeting with the Bayer CEO last year. He said in these emails that they will be bringing up some legal slash judicial issues. More specifically, in this internal email in your EPA, it says that Bayer was specifically seeking to and discussing Supreme Court action. They will want an update on EPA’s regulatory review and that, interestingly, Bayer will provide a small thanks for updating the glyphosate web page from the EPA and work on MAHA. Do you have any idea what they might have been referring to in this email?
Rep. Greg Landsman of Ohio went at Zeldin over the real-world impact of the EPA’s deregulation and budget cuts after he claimed Zeldin received positive feedback.
“Where’s this feedback coming from?” Landsman shot back. “You touch ground and you talk to people and they’re just running up to you and they’re just saying ‘Thank you so much for cutting the EPA. Thank you so much for protecting cutting our healthcare. We are so glad that trillions of dollars are going to the richest people in this country.’”
And Rep. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, fed up with Zeldin, erupted at one point. “You said other stuff—crazy stuff—today,” he said, mocking Zeldin’s repeated references to “the Biden administration.”
“Are you going to do anything at some point?” Menendez asked.
When officials, used to operating without accountability, are faced with serious oversight, they expose themselves as both incompetent and profoundly corrupt.
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