The New Yorker had a full-blown meltdown this week over E.P.A. Administrator Lee Zeldin’s unapologetic effort to carry out President Trump’s environmental agenda.
In the process, the magazine unintentionally elevates Zeldin to folk hero status among the conservative faithful, making him look exactly like what many conservatives have long wanted: an E.P.A. chief who is finally willing to fight aggressive environmental leftism instead of accommodating it.
Titled “Can the E.P.A. Survive Lee Zeldin?” the article begins by expressing outrage over Zeldin slapping the wrists of 144 insubordinate career E.P.A. bureaucrats who published a public letter excoriating their boss. The letter begins by stating, “Declaration of dissent: E.P.A. employees join in solidarity with employees across the federal government in opposing this administration’s policies,” while singling out Zeldin by name for special criticism.
The letter reads like an Ilhan Omar press release. It alleges that “black communities,” “disabled communities,” “LGBTQIA+ communities,” and the usual mix of leftist special-interest groups are disproportionately impacted by climate change and environmental harm. The letter then chastises Zeldin for cutting back funding and staff dedicated to “environmental justice.”
So much for career bureaucrats in Washington being dispassionate, politically neutral applicators of law and policy.
Screenshot: The New Yorker
For the crime of carrying out the elected president’s agenda, Zeldin is accused by career bureaucrats of “undermining public trust,” “promot[ing] misinformation,” and even backing “President Trump’s tariffs.”
The E.P.A. is part of the executive branch of the federal government, and the administrator reports directly to the president. E.P.A.’s role is to implement environmental laws and policies consistent with federal law and the president’s direction.
By definition, it is aggressively insubordinate for a federal agency’s bureaucratic employees to publicly criticize and issue a “Declaration of dissent” against the boss of their agency.
How did Zeldin respond? He placed the offending employees on temporary administrative leave, receiving full pay and benefits. In other words, Zeldin gave the insubordinate staffers free vacation time. Reading The New Yorker article, however, one would think Zeldin sentenced the staffers to hard labor in a gulag.
The New Yorker then goes on to attack Zeldin’s voting record in Congress. As an elected Republican, Zeldin voted “mostly along party lines” rather than joining Democrats in opposition to Republican-supported policies.
According to the Heritage Action Scorecard, which tallies how often a member of Congress votes the conservative or liberal position on the most important congressional votes, Zeldin strayed from the conservative Republican position 22% of the time during his years in Congress. By comparison, so-called “conservative” Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema deviated from the liberal Democrat position just 21% and 10% of the time, respectively.
Zeldin deviated from the conservative position more frequently than so-called conservative Democrats, and yet The New Yorker still brands Zeldin a conservative extremist.
The New Yorker then complains that in the September 12, 2025, issue of the official E.P.A. newsletter, Zeldin engages in “mourning” Charlie Kirk’s assassination. To illustrate its outrage, The New Yorker points out, exasperated, that Zeldin wrote, “In Loving Memory” in the E.P.A. newsletter under a picture of Kirk.
The fact is, The New Yorker, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and the rest of the leftist cabal are losing their minds because Zeldin is the most principled and effective implementer of common-sense conservative environmental policy in the history of the E.P.A.
Under the squishy presidencies of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, the two Bushes searched for the most environmentally leftist “Republican” they could find. Both cases were a futile effort to win Democratic votes. George H.W. Bush chose William K. Reilly, who previously served as head of the leftist environmental activist group World Wildlife Fund, to lead his E.P.A. George W. Bush chose one of the most liberal self-identified Republican politicians in the country, former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, to lead his E.P.A.
Lee Zeldin is unquestionably the greatest conservative administrator the E.P.A. has ever had. The New Yorker can’t stand that, and its amateurish hit job on a very competent and effective Zeldin only makes them look more toxic.
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James Taylor ([email protected]) is President of The Heartland Institute.
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