00:06:24.000Hey guys, and welcome to another huge episode of Triggered.
00:06:28.000We're back in studio today and we'll be joined by EPA Administrator, the legend of Zeldin, Lee Zeldin.
00:06:36.000Lee has been a longtime friend, an ally, a member of Congress for a long time, just been one of the first guys I ever met in politics, just an incredible guy.
00:06:45.000And he's exposing the left's green slush fund scam head on.
00:06:50.000And the Trump EPA is going back to basics clean air, clean water, reliable energy.
00:06:56.000And not turning the agency into a piggy bank for left wing NGOs as we've seen literally across the entire government these days.
00:07:03.000They've ended roughly $30 billion in green slush funds and they're rooting out the fraud.
00:07:12.000And of course, the left's response is exactly what you'd expect.
00:07:15.000Instead of asking, perhaps, I don't know, how to keep energy affordable or how to clean up the actual pollution, Senator Patty Murray is out there asking Lee Zeldin if he believes there's, quote, abortion.
00:07:33.000Here's just a small sample of the insanity.
00:07:36.000Are you actually spending taxpayer dollars looking into medication abortion being in the water?
00:07:43.000Unless they're one of the many hundreds of pharmaceuticals on the list of the contaminant candidate list, I'm not aware of the agency doing anything with that.
00:07:54.000Do you seriously believe there's abortion in the water like some of the far right activists are suggesting?
00:08:29.000Well, again, unless you're referring to a pharmaceutical that is on the list of the hundreds of pharmaceuticals.
00:08:37.000That are part of the contaminant candidate list six.
00:08:41.000But aside from that, I'm not aware of anything else at the agency other than that.
00:08:46.000I'm citing a New York Times article and we're happy to get it to you.
00:08:49.000But I just got to say, this is really crazy.
00:08:51.000And Lee is so effective that Democrats are even telling him to go drink Weed Killer because they actually have no argument.0.99
00:09:00.000He knows who are the puppets, he knows who are the smart people in Congress, he knows who are the morons who just show up looking for a soundbite.0.99
00:09:08.000And let's just say he's able to capitalize on that.1.00
00:10:09.000And if you're coming at us wanting to know why the Trump administration, in the largest act of deregulation, rescinded the 2009 endangerment finding, I'm going to cite the law, the best reading of the law, the Supreme Court cases that require me to do that and not get creative in making up my own law.
00:10:27.000And you better come prepared knowing the recent landmark cases of the Supreme Court as far as separation of powers and reining in regulatory overreach.
00:10:48.000And we're exposing the fraud literally in every corner of every failed left wing state on the Green News scam, on day one, on daycare, on Medicaid, on everything in between.0.97
00:11:04.000So, Dr. Oz, I want to make sure I understand this well.
00:11:06.000So, you're saying that we kicked off 800 fraudulent health care providers off of the Medicare system, and not a single one of them called the government and said, hey, you made a mistake.
00:11:15.000We've had a handful of calls, we're not sure they're legitimate yet.
00:11:18.000But it's less than 20 out of 800, and we're auditing them.
00:11:22.000So, at least 780 are not even trying to claim that they're not fraudulent.
00:11:28.000And again, those are businesses that we were giving hundreds of millions, in some cases, billions of dollars to, not to provide services, but to make a fraudster rich.
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00:13:27.000But you posted recently that the Trump EPA ended the green slush funds and saved roughly $30 billion for taxpayers.
00:13:37.000What exactly did you find when you opened the books here?
00:13:40.000Because I imagine this is another one of these areas, like healthcare and elsewhere, where it's probably just scam after scam.
00:13:46.000So after the November 24 election, the president's going through this transition period.
00:13:52.000I'm going through the confirmation process in December.
00:13:55.000There's this video that comes out of this by an EPA official.
00:13:59.000You and I had spoken about this in the past.
00:14:02.000They were talking about how they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic, rushing to get billions of dollars out the door before President Trump came in because they were scared that once President Trump came in, he was going to stop it.
00:14:12.000Well, that part was actually pretty true because as soon as the president does come in, we find the gold bars that they were tossing off of the Titanic, and we did stop it.
00:14:22.000We canceled almost $29 billion worth of grants.
00:14:28.000And actually, the number now, that number is just over $29 billion.
00:15:06.000But in total, this is $30 billion to save at an agency where the annual operating budget was only $10 billion a year.
00:15:15.000So, a lot of people, when I start off by saying, yeah, we have an annual operating budget of $10 billion, in our first year we saved $30 billion, people would scratch their heads and be like, okay, how's that possible?
00:15:26.000It was very possible because in 2024, the agency obligated and spent over $60 billion, a lot more money than they even knew how to spend.
00:15:37.000Is there a way to sort of go back and reclaim some of that?
00:15:40.000Because I imagine it's all the same thing, right?
00:15:43.000You know, there's an environmental organization that, you know, saves something that doesn't need to be saved or, you know, just gets in the way of, you know, anything else.
00:15:52.000And, you know, the vast majority of those funds are probably kicked back to the Democratic fundraising apparatus to keep it going and just continue and perpetuate the drift.
00:16:01.000So this money that we canceled was largely made up of those funds from 2024.
00:16:08.000And, you know, of course, once you cancel the grant, the people who are receiving the money, they then sue.
00:16:12.000So we're going through some of that litigation right now.
00:16:16.000But what we found was that billions of dollars at a time were going through individual nonprofit organizations that were set up as pass through entities made up of former Biden Obama officials and Democratic donors.
00:16:34.000Like the president always talks about the $2 billion that went through that Stacey Abrams.
00:16:38.000Connected NGO that received $100 in 23.
00:16:42.000$100 operating budget in 23, and then all of a sudden they're getting billions.
00:16:46.000It's, I mean, it's insane that it can happen.
00:16:48.000It's also insane that there weren't like whistleblowers in the agency itself.
00:16:53.000I mean, you got thousands of employees that no one would step up and actually say something until you got in there.
00:16:57.000So the inspector general was raising the flag on it.
00:17:02.000There were certainly sirens going off inside the inspector general's office.
00:17:06.000And what we've learned since we've come in.
00:17:09.000Is that we keep overturning new rocks, and under the rock, we'll find some email that some staffer had sent complaining about excessive executive compensation at, for example, that Stacey Abrams Connected NGO and others.
00:17:27.000I mean, they were entities that were getting $5, $7 billion.
00:17:32.000They were created for the purpose of taking this money.
00:17:36.000So they were not qualified, they had no record.
00:17:42.000Of having this type of money going through them previously.
00:17:46.000And they were created just for the purpose of receiving it.
00:17:48.000There was this program called Solar for All, $7 billion.
00:17:53.000Where we found examples of that money going through up to four different pass through entities where each of the pass throughs were collecting at least 15%.
00:18:02.000You know, you do the math on just how diluted the dollar gets.
00:18:07.000We found examples of environmental justice grants where instead of the dollar getting spent to remediate an environmental issue, the dollar was going to an activist group to train other activist groups to come to DC and advocate for the next dollar to go to them so they could go out and be activists.
00:18:31.000Yeah, it's Southern Poverty Law Center with an environmental tinge.0.62
00:18:34.000The Climate Justice Alliance received $50 million, and they say that climate justice runs through a free Palestine.
00:18:41.000You have all these Americans throughout the country who are saying if you're going to spend $50 million to improve the environment, why would the $50 million go to an organization that is so focused on having climate justice through a free Palestine?0.57
00:19:02.000So, you, I mean, you've referred to this really as it's a green slush fund.
00:19:07.000You know, in plain English, what does that mean?
00:19:10.000Who can you name the people who are getting these monies?
00:19:12.000Obviously, there's the NGOs, but are there, you know, big people that are former Obama or Biden or, you know, both kind of people that are just running this?
00:19:20.000I mean, can we show these names and, again, go out there and in detail show the taxpayers what they're actually paying for?
00:19:28.000Because I think, you know, again, You know, $30 billion seemed like an insane number, and yet we're probably jaded when we think about the government.
00:19:36.000You know, I remember when that used to be a lot of money in the government.
00:19:40.000People have probably been desensitized to that, as crazy as that sounds.
00:19:44.000You know, can we put out there all of these things and show, you know, again, 15% going off to get to the root cause and how much that is?
00:19:51.000Because, you know, 15% of $7 billion is a lot of money, a lot of money.
00:19:58.000And if it's going through four stages, You know, there's nothing left for the cause, even if the cause was real and it probably wasn't.
00:20:05.000Yeah, and we're not talking about junior staffers either.
00:20:08.000You're talking about former cabinet members like the secretary of HUD under President Obama.
00:20:14.000You're talking about the former CEO of Fannie and Freddie.
00:20:17.000These are senior admin officials from the Biden and Obama administrations that, because of their notoriety for being in such powerful, influential roles, they're recruited, they're brought in.
00:20:32.000To be able to reach out to the Biden EPA, use those contacts, leverage those names to be able to secure the money.
00:20:40.000But yeah, I'm going to give you the whole list of names.
00:21:14.000The there was an agreement with EPA with those eight prime recipients, but then the prime recipients cut the deals with subrecipients.
00:21:25.000And as the deals get cut with those subrecipients, the EPA has less and less oversight, they're not directly involved in those arrangements.
00:21:38.000It's to get the money out of the treasury and to these private actors with as little control by the government and as little oversight as possible by the government.
00:21:51.000They were amending their account control agreements up to days before President Trump's inauguration.
00:22:31.000No, this has definitely ended up involving multiple three letter agencies, not just EPA.
00:22:37.000I hope some of those three letter agencies involve law enforcement because I would think there's also some criminality here if this is happening and that nothing ever gets spent for the actual cause.
00:22:46.000And the wildest part of it is you have members of Congress who ended up, this is when Democrats were in control, they ended up signing off on wasting this money.
00:22:58.000So, like the EPA and the Treasury under Biden and OMB, the Office of Management and Budget under Biden, these agencies were all deploying money that Congress had blessed.
00:23:34.000It's not like this money was being stolen without the blessing of Congress.
00:23:40.000Yeah, the money was almost, Congress seems to be encouraging the theft of this money.
00:23:44.000Yeah, and by the way, when, you know, I remember last year when I was in front of the Senate EPW committee and Senator Markey of Massachusetts was asking me about these grants that I was stopping, and he's like, Do you have any evidence of, you know, whatever he was asking about this greenhouse gas reduction fund?
00:24:43.000So we put on the website, we sent it to the Office of Inspector General, we sent it to other agencies, including law enforcement capabilities for them to be able to look into.
00:24:55.000But those members of Congress who blessed this, and they call it the Inflation Reduction Act, they should have called it the Inflation Expansion Act.
00:25:02.000They blessed it in their legislation when they had one party rule.
00:25:06.000They don't want us to go through all the specifics of what's wrong with it.
00:25:11.000They'd rather just say, hey, you have no evidence of any wrongdoing.
00:25:40.000When you're sitting in these hearings and you're listening to this nonsense, and a senator throws something like that out at you, just what's going through your mind at the time?
00:25:48.000Because it seems like they have these high level sound bites that don't make any sense, but they're so used to never having any pushback of just logic and reason and fact.
00:25:59.000It's almost like in their mind, they're like, oh, I got them this time.
00:26:03.000It's definitely an advantage of having spent eight years as a member of Congress on the other side of the dais and getting a chance to know these people.
00:26:11.000There are some very intelligent members of Congress who do their homework, they prepare their questions in advance, it's thoughtful, they wanna be productive with their time.
00:26:21.000And I'm cognizant of that as I'm sitting in that chair.
00:26:25.000Like, if anybody wants to engage in a productive, substantive conversation, I am ready for it.
00:26:31.000And that happens at every one of these hearings.
00:26:34.000I'm also well aware that there are people.
00:26:59.000And when I start pushing back at all, they just completely lose their place on their page.
00:27:04.000They don't know what they're talking about.
00:27:06.000Some will be smart enough, actually, in that moment to change the topic.1.00
00:27:10.000You have other members who will then double down and triple down on stupid.1.00
00:27:15.000And you're like, I have to engage.0.99
00:27:18.000So, like that clip that, you know, what just happened this week with Senator Murray, I mean, she asked me that first question about the agency.
00:27:26.000Taking actions to regulate abortions and water or stop abortions and water.
00:27:33.000I don't know what you're talking about.
00:27:35.000I mean, if it's like there was this contaminant candidate list.
00:27:39.000Just because you say something does not mean there's any merit to it, right?
00:27:44.000So we had this contaminant candidate list that has 374 pharmaceuticals on it.
00:27:51.000My point to Senator Murray, unless you're referring to a pharmaceutical on that contaminant candidate list, the hundreds of pharmaceuticals.
00:28:01.000I don't know what else you could possibly be referring to.
00:28:04.000And, you know, she just keeps going down this line.
00:28:07.000And clearly she had no idea what she was speaking about.
00:28:10.000So while I am ready to engage in a productive, substantive conversation, I am also ready for any of you to come at me and try to challenge me on the decisions that we're making.
00:28:21.000So, you know, in Congresswoman DeLauro, you know, that was.
00:28:29.000I mean, I watched that like three times because it was so funny.
00:28:33.000The whole thing about telling me to drink Wee Killer was at the end of a back and forth that starts off with basically trying to ask, why did we repeal the 2009 endangerment finding?
00:28:44.000Now, she had her way of asking the question, but that's basically what she was asking.
00:28:48.000And I said, we're just following the law.
00:28:51.000Section 202 of the Clean Air Act, where does it say anything about fighting global climate change?
00:28:56.000We have to follow the best reading of the law pursuant to Loper Bright, and we have to respect.
00:29:01.000Which was a Supreme Court ruling, right?
00:29:13.000If you don't, you'd be in trouble, probably lose your job, and they can't understand even why and didn't even know anything about the ruling, which is kind of problematic since these people are making, you know, trillion dollar decisions every day.
00:29:24.000Yeah, you're asking me about a law that you haven't read.
00:29:28.000We then start talking about the biggest landmark Supreme Court case of recent years overturning the Chevron Doctrine.
00:29:35.000If you want to show up to a No Kings protest on Saturday, And start railing about how we should have separation of power and checks and balances, and you're concerned about executive overreach.
00:29:46.000How do you not know the largest Supreme Court case of recent years on precisely that?
00:29:54.000And, you know, that's one of the biggest hypocrisies and ironies when they go to these rallies on a Saturday morning.
00:30:03.000Secondly, is if you really are concerned about executive overreach, like this is, there are, I mentioned that's one, Loper Bright.
00:30:12.000The other one that I referenced, Jessel wasn't aware of this.
00:30:14.000I talked about West Virginia versus EPA.
00:30:16.000And the major questions doctrine that EPA shouldn't be imposing trillions of dollars of regulation without there being a debate and a vote in Congress.
00:30:24.000Like it should be in the law telling the regulatory agency because Congress too often punts because they don't have the will or they don't have the votes to get something done.
00:30:34.000They call their friend down the street who runs a federal agency and says, hey, we can't actually get the votes, so why don't you just do it anyway?
00:30:49.000And it wasn't through laws or regulations or following the rules.
00:30:51.000It was just like they allowed these governmental agencies to just do things to enact their will by basically prohibiting people from being able to do things the way things had always been done.
00:31:02.000Yeah, you could look at a statute as a head of an agency and say, this statute doesn't say that I can't do this.
00:31:12.000Like for decades, that actually was just the way things worked.
00:31:17.000That was the Chevron deference doctrine in action.
00:31:20.000I mean, the 2009 endangerment finding that I repealed, you know, announced it with President Trump at the White House $1.3 trillion of savings, $2,400 more affordable new vehicles, the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States.
00:31:34.000Rescinding the 2009 endangerment finding and all of the greenhouse gas emission standards that followed on light, medium, and heavy duty vehicles and all off cycle credits, including that almost universally despised start stop feature, the 2009 endangerment finding.
00:31:49.000Included in it the administrator saying that she had discretion because the law, the Clean Air Act, didn't say that she couldn't do it.
00:32:03.000That was actually okay back then, but it's not okay anymore.
00:32:06.000Yeah, it's funny also that you mentioned the No Kings protest, and yet they had all of those, and a week later, the actual King of England showed up to America, and there was no protest.
00:32:16.000No one was complaining about that, which was kind of ironic to me.
00:32:19.000Not only were there no protests, but they were on the floor of the House of Representatives.
00:32:25.000Like, you know, clapping and, you know, saluting and standing in attention like you've never seen for even a president of their own party.
00:32:32.000It was like, man, the irony is we're sitting there in the seat.
00:32:37.000I mean, I saw one member of Congress was criticizing me because while I was clapping, the members thought that I wasn't clapping enthusiastically enough, like for the king of the country.
00:32:51.000I mean, damned if you do, damned if you don't, Lee.0.99
00:32:54.000Hey, what do you make of, you know, speaking of environmental sort of hypocrisy?0.99
00:32:59.000I've been reading a little bit about it.
00:33:01.000I haven't gotten, you know, I haven't sort of gone down the rabbit hole entirely on it these days.
00:33:05.000But Al Gore is now warning about the importance of climate change, but this time it's about cooling.
00:33:14.000So the guy that literally, I think he started like a $30 billion fund, you know, while, you know, short, right after he enacted all the environmental legislation about global warming.
00:33:24.000Made a lot of money pushing BS because I think the average temperature change in the last 50 years was like something like 0.2 degrees.
00:33:31.000So I'm not sure if that's a statistically significant number.
00:33:39.000Is this just another part of the grift?
00:33:42.000There's got to be a way that he's found money to be made off of this.
00:33:47.000It's the only logical reason for a complete 180.
00:33:52.000He was, as you pointed out, the inconvenient truths and making movies and traveling.
00:33:58.000He actually started a fund, too, to invest in these green companies after basically being the leader of the legislation to enact this stuff that, again, never made sense to most people, but didn't matter.
00:34:07.000It was a global topic for two decades.
00:34:10.000Yeah, and he was just in California and he was doing one of these fireside chats and he was.
00:34:16.000All of a sudden, now we're talking about global freezing.
00:34:19.000Yeah, which is ironic because everyone's basically been saying that if you look at, you know, if you go back to like geological time, you have warming periods, cooling periods, warming periods, cooling periods.
00:34:38.000And the science has very optimistic predictions of where temperature is going or sea level is going.
00:34:45.000Science has very pessimistic predictions.
00:34:49.000As to where temperatures are going and sea levels are going, and what has happened to justify policy decisions to get the left's goals to be able to advance their own priorities.
00:35:05.000In some cases, they'll adopt the most pessimistic prediction that when you get to 2026, you realize that was just a bad assumption and it didn't pan out.
00:35:16.000And then in some cases, they go beyond the most pessimistic prediction.
00:35:20.000And they give out a prediction that proves to just be completely bonkers.
00:35:27.000John Kerry has done this with statements.
00:35:30.000AOC said seven years ago that we had 12 years left of the earth before it's no longer in existence.
00:35:38.000They have gone beyond the most pessimistic views.
00:35:41.000And I'll tell you, they look like fools when that timeline of the prediction of what's going to happen in five years or seven years or 12 years, when you get to that point, you realize that, well, obviously that was never going to happen.0.61
00:35:53.000So, yeah, I mean, like we as conservatives, first off, we care deeply about the environment and want to be good stewards of the environment.0.96
00:36:00.000You know, I know just how often, how much of your life is spent just, you know, enjoying America, appreciating our environment, and making sure that we're being good conservationalists of our land.
00:36:14.000And, you know, but we also get that there's optimistic to pessimistic predictions, and we don't know exactly what the temperature is going to be in 2100.
00:36:24.000But what we shouldn't do is because of a position that is either the most pessimistic view or beyond, that we should be causing extreme economic pain today, adopting a belief that in order to protect the environment, we have to destroy entire segments of our economy, that we need to be choking off baseload, reliable, durable baseload power, and talking about intermittent sources as if it's a replacement of baseload power.
00:36:55.000And for the Americans who are struggling the most, when you go through a winter like we just went through, for many Americans where it was really cold for an extended period of time, I mean, thank God President Trump's in there.
00:37:06.000He's unleashing U.S. energy dominance.
00:37:08.000He has a National Energy Dominance Council.
00:37:16.000The ground has already been broken in.
00:37:18.000There's trillions of dollars of new investment coming.
00:37:21.000Thank God we're going in that direction as opposed to continuing the trend that we saw under the Biden administration.
00:37:27.000Trying to regulate out of existence, clean, beautiful coal, stopping pipelines from being built all across the entire country, and making sure that permits are as long and as expensive as possible to be able to get approvals on.
00:37:41.000Is night and day between Biden's speed and Trump's speed.
00:37:44.000Well, and they didn't believe any of these things themselves.
00:37:48.000John Kerry, as you mentioned, you know, like both of them have, you know, I think Obama's got like a $20 million house on Martha's Vineyard, which is like at sea level.
00:37:56.000Like if we were really worried about the seas going up that many feet, they probably wouldn't invest that much of a sum there.
00:38:15.000And Then I read this year, even the Arctic is added ice, an unprecedented amount of added ice to the Arctic.
00:38:24.000So it's like, you know, maybe some of these things are a little cyclical.
00:38:27.000Well, as you pointed out, yeah, and as you pointed out, over the course of you go back thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, you know, as long as history, data, science goes back, there has been a changing climate in this world.
00:38:42.000The hoax that you hear coming from President Trump is that grift.
00:38:48.000That we were talking about here throughout the interview.
00:38:51.000The way that, in the name of climate change, the name of environmental justice, in the name of climate justice, they are taking that dollar and giving it to their well connected friends.
00:39:02.000Conservatives come in, we don't say, hey, let's take that dollar from a left wing NGO and give it to a right wing NGO.
00:39:09.000We say, let's give that money to the Treasury and back to the American public.
00:39:17.000And if you're going to spend a dollar, To remediate an environmental issue, then spend the dollar on remediating the environmental issue.
00:39:25.000The hoax is in the name of climate change to put forth policies that, like in the state of New York, where we're from, they will not extract natural gas.
00:39:38.000They have stopped all sorts of new pipelines, including the Constitution Pipeline, which is needed for natural gas to New England.
00:39:45.000They won't allow gas hookups to a new construction.
00:39:47.000They've set climate goals that they know they will not meet.
00:39:51.000And that's a big piece of debate right now.
00:39:53.000And because of the economic pain of their policies, that's why New York and California are leading the country in out migration.
00:40:01.000People are leaving these states and going to Florida and the Carolinas and Tennessee and Texas, where their money will go further.
00:40:08.000And it's all in the name of climate change that you put forth those policies.
00:40:14.000That's what President Trump has been railing on as the hoax behind it.
00:40:19.000Yeah, because you got those billions of dollars, and then you have the Paris Climate Accords and all that nonsense.
00:40:24.000But like China and India, The biggest polluters in the world by far.
00:40:27.000They're like, ah, we'll talk about that in 2030.
00:40:29.000So we can't destroy our middle class when, you know, I wish you could say, hey, America's in a bubble.
00:40:36.000If we protect our environment, we're going to be good.
00:40:42.000If China just keeps rampantly firing up coal power plants and India's dumping all their stuff into the water and all these things are going on in the world, like we share one environment.
00:40:51.000So to subsidize this insanity while the bad actors still continue to make it worse, literally at the expense of destroying our middle class, Our advancement, development.
00:41:34.000China utilizes more coal, 40% more coal than the rest of the world combined.
00:41:40.000And they have, in one year, ramped up more coal production than the rest of the world combined.
00:41:48.000And you can have coal and do it well and make it clean, but I bet you they're not doing that.
00:41:52.000I am sure that across the board, all forms of energy production, we do better and cleaner for the environment.
00:42:00.000With regards to engines, whether you want to go out, by the way, we believe in consumer choice.
00:42:05.000You go out, you want to get an electric vehicle, a hybrid, a diesel.
00:42:09.000A truck, a gas power, a internal combustion engine, whatever you want should be your choice.
00:42:15.000All of those forms of engines have advanced so much over the course of the last 10, 15, 20 years.
00:42:21.000And you can protect the environment while also growing the economy.
00:42:26.000At the one year mark of President Trump's term in office, we released a list of our top 500 environmental, pro environmental accomplishments, our pro environmental wins of that first year while doing all this other work.
00:42:40.000On the deregulatory side and applying common sense and heating economic demands and unleashing energy dominance, we're also protecting the environment.
00:42:49.000This agency at EPA, and I've met so many amazing, dedicated career staffers here who love their job, they love the agency, they love serving the American public, and they're doing really good work every single day.
00:43:04.000And if you pick up that list of 500 top environmental accomplishments, these are actions that That people, the EPA, like they dedicate their whole lives towards achieving that pace, by the way, is something that we're motivated to keep up going forward.
00:43:20.000We are proving that you could protect the environment and grow the economy.
00:43:24.000This is just the way it should have always been.
00:43:28.000It's the way that it always should be going forward.
00:43:31.000Yeah, I mean, this is a big one for me because you know, you think about all the stats that you see, and I have you know, five young kids, and you know, male testosterone levels are you know, half of what they used to be, or you know, the average testosterone of an 18 20 year old kid.
00:43:44.000Is that of a 70 year old male 50 years ago?
00:43:49.000So I know you're doing some important work on microplastics.
00:43:54.000These are things just getting into your body, screwing up your hormones, all of these things.
00:43:59.000What are some of the major key regulatory actions that you're working on?
00:44:03.000Because I think that's such a huge part of sort of the Maha movement side of things, gets a lot of attention in certain niche circles, seems to be a major, major problem that no one even thought about until recently.
00:44:14.000But I know you're taking that head on.0.98
00:44:16.000What are we doing to minimize that kind of insanity?
00:44:19.000Because we're poisoning ourselves without even knowing it.
00:44:22.000Yeah, in recent weeks, alongside Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr., we did a joint announcement on microplastics at EPA for the first time ever.
00:44:34.000We added microplastics to our contaminant candidate list.
00:44:38.000At the same time, HHS announced a big initiative to be pursuing, I think it's $144 million.
00:44:48.000Of implementation to research and combat microplastics.
00:44:52.000It's been a big focus of Secretary Kennedy for a very long time.
00:44:56.000And yeah, it's the first time at EPA ever that microplastics was added to this list with what was called Contaminant Candidate List 6.
00:45:04.000We also are doing lead service line replacements across the entire country, a big focus to be able to remove lead in pipes.
00:45:13.000There's a big effort in combating PFAS to make sure that we're able to treat it in the water, to be able to treat it in land.
00:45:24.000Superfund work, brownfield sites, where you're able to take some blight, do environmental remediation, partner with the private sector, where they might be coming in 100 times the level of the taxpayer dollar.
00:45:40.000You know, like the government comes in with $500,000, and you just put this big deal together where, you know, there's $25 million of private sector investment to build.
00:45:51.000You know, the America First Center in Las Vegas, where the Vegas Golden Knights minor league team plays.
00:46:00.000There's so many, and actually, right near there, Symphony Park in Las Vegas is where President Trump was just recently at during his last trip to Las Vegas.
00:46:10.000That was a big brownfield site, like an old Union Pacific location.
00:46:15.000So there's so much work that we do here every single day across the board that we're going to just continue to keep up.
00:46:22.000President Trump, I mean, the first pillar of Power in the Great American Comeback. is to pursue clean air, land, and water for all Americans.
00:46:29.000Our core mission is protecting human health and the environment.
00:46:34.000We can never lose sight on that core mission of this agency.
00:46:38.000We also have to heed the demands of the American public.
00:46:41.000When they went to vote November of 24, they had economic concerns that they wanted all of the different agencies of the federal government to heed, to apply common sense, to be pragmatic, and to make sure that while you are accomplishing your core mission, You are doing so in a way that are also accomplishing these important goals to be able to make America great again.
00:47:05.000That was the Trump mandate that the American public voted for.
00:47:09.000And we are implementing it, by the way, while fulfilling all of our statutory obligations, reducing or eliminating already all sorts of different backlogs we inherited.
00:47:20.000We're doing more with less, and we're honored to do so.
00:47:25.000And just trying to have an agency that we can just very transparently, radically, Transparent with the American public to let everyone know what we are working on, following gold standard science, to fulfill the president's executive orders, and to do all those statutory obligations following the best reading of the law and to make America proud.
00:47:47.000That is our goal every single day when we wake up and come into this office.
00:47:51.000Yeah, it's sort of amazing that you can, you know, I know you mentioned sort of just over 100 million to combat the microplastics.
00:47:56.000It's like, when you think of it, it's like 0.3% of the $30 billion that you saved.
00:48:00.000Imagine we just did a thousand of those programs to actually help us.
00:48:05.000Feel better, be healthier, eliminate these problems rather than just funding, you know, again, Democrat shill organizations and NGOs.
00:48:14.000So I love that you're finding those things.
00:48:17.000Yeah, where that money goes, where that tax dollar goes, needs to be spent as efficiently and effectively as possible.
00:48:24.000And rather than like sending the money through multiple pastor entities so that your friends can take cuts, again, we're not here saying let's have that money go through.
00:48:41.000I want that money to be protected for the American taxpayer.
00:48:45.000I have a zero tolerance policy for any waste and abuse.
00:48:49.000I mean, you see what's going on right now as we're approaching America 250 and getting the reflective pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial looking beautiful, maybe better than ever.
00:49:00.000And the president wants to do it for like, it's almost nothing.
00:49:03.000You're talking about millions of dollars that are, you know, it's coming in a heck of a lot less.
00:49:10.000Than the cost if you're following some process of, you know, let's rip out every stone.
00:49:18.000Let's give that contract to, you know, this contract to this friend and that contract to another and this contract to another.
00:49:24.000And then we're going to completely redo the reflective pool.
00:49:27.000It's going to cost $250, $300 million.
00:49:30.000You know, the President Trump, you know, for President Trump, who's a builder, he's looking at this thing saying, what is the cheapest possible way that we can get this?
00:49:41.000Looking better than it's ever looked before in time for America 250 to make this celebration as awesome as possible.
00:49:49.000And when a figure comes in in a few million, they're like, oh no, he wants to spend a few million dollars.
00:49:54.000They were going to blow 50X of that and not accomplish anything.
00:50:28.000And by the way, doing this stuff as quickly as possible.
00:50:31.000When I came in, when President Trump was sworn into office, he gave EPA 30 days to complete our hazardous material removal after this apocalyptic, worst wildfire I have ever seen or heard of in Los Angeles.
00:51:31.000Again, it's not something you'd be like, oh, that's EPA, even though clearly it was an environmental disaster beyond a financial disaster, beyond a humanitarian disaster.
00:51:43.000So the president comes in and he mobilizes his agencies to do.
00:51:49.000Like federal government things, like EPA to do the hazardous material removal, and the Army Corps to do the debris removal, and the Small Business Administration came in, and half their disaster loans in 25 went to the LA rebuild.
00:52:04.000But then here's the other side of President Trump.
00:52:06.000At the one year anniversary, he sees that there isn't enough rebuilding that is happening.
00:52:12.000Like the federal government did all of the federal government things in record time, but now he wants to know what else can we do?
00:52:22.000So the president ends up, he sends me out to Los Angeles.
00:52:26.000I went out there with Administrator Lesler.
00:52:29.000EPA started doing it, it's like constituent services.
00:52:32.000We started calling individuals who lost their homes to just help them get their homes rebuilt, to get their permits through.
00:52:40.000You've seen thousands of new permits approved since President Trump ordered EPA to take the lead and had me go out there and do what you would say are non traditional things.
00:52:55.000For a federal agency to do, President Trump tweeted, he posted on Truth Social about insurance companies.
00:53:03.000Some of the insurance companies were dragging their feet.
00:53:06.000They were underpaying after dragging their people through the mud and requiring all sorts of payment, proof of stuff, but then they weren't paying their full policy.
00:53:16.000The president names names on Truth Social to get the results.
00:53:20.000He then has a meeting a couple weeks ago with local leadership from California.
00:53:24.000They come in talking about mortgage forbearance and banks that could be doing more.
00:53:30.000He starts naming names on Truth Social to get involved in the banking piece.
00:53:35.000Now, there are plenty of administrations and presidents in the past who would say, Okay, we're not going to get involved in the local log jams of the local permits.
00:53:45.000We're not getting involved in state regulatory issues regarding their insurance and banking industry.0.97
00:53:52.000This president's like, it's Admiral Farragut, damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.0.92
00:53:57.000Not only can we break through all of these federal log jams, which he did on day one when he came in, but a year in, he's like, well, screw that.0.94
00:54:06.000I want to break through all the non federal log jams now, too.
00:54:10.000I mean, yeah, so speaking of that, maybe what is the biggest.
00:54:14.000Philosophical difference between the Biden EPA and the Trump EPA?
00:54:18.000Is it as simple as just activism versus stewardship?
00:54:22.000The simplest thing is we inherited an agency where decisions were being made under the belief that in order to protect the environment, you have to strangle out of existence entire sectors of the economy.
00:54:34.000President Trump and the Trump EPA believe that you could protect the environment and grow the economy.
00:54:40.000We can and must and we do choose both.
00:54:47.000Regulation after regulation after regulation after regulation trying to eliminate reliable, durable coal from, by the way, states where it's the primary source.
00:54:58.000They were just making them disappear and just telling those coal miners that they should learn to code.
00:55:04.000Well, we're reversing that because it didn't make any sense on so many different levels.0.79
00:55:10.000And these are acronyms that a lot of the public might not be familiar with Clean Power Plan 2.0, the 2024 Mercury and Air Toxic Standards.
00:55:18.000Coal combustion residual, steam electric ELG.
00:55:21.000Like your audience is busy living their lives, doing their jobs.
00:55:26.000They're not paying attention to acronyms and different rules and regulations.
00:55:30.000But what they are aware of, if you're from North Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming, you care about being able to have power.
00:55:40.000You want to be able to have your home warm in those winter months.
00:55:45.000And when President Trump unleashed energy dominance and put us on this task, The policies end up making a big difference because of him.
00:55:54.000I mean, the first meeting they had with President Trump, and I had Secretary Burgum with me, and there was Secretary Wright and others, he was talking about Nessie Pipeline being built to deliver natural gas from Pennsylvania to up to 2.3 million New Yorkers in downstate New York.
00:56:10.000This project had been stalled for almost a decade.
00:56:14.000The president not only got it going again, he got the federal permits done, ground has been broken.
00:56:21.000The pipeline will be done by the end of 2027.
00:56:26.000I mean, there's so many stories like this.
00:56:28.000The retrofits and new builds on nuclear that have started since the president had come in.
00:56:36.000Yeah, so it's, but if you were to try to figure out like what's the big picture ideological difference, is that we came in saying, all right, we are going to protect the environment and grow the economy.
00:56:50.000So maybe your last question, because I know you have a lot of stuff you got to do and a lot of crazy people you have to deal with, but.
00:56:56.000For Americans who want clean air, clean water, but are ultimately sick of being lectured about climate change by radicals while their bills go up every day, what should they know about what you're doing at the EPA and what can they possibly do to actually help and push some of this through?
00:57:11.000Because we got to codify these things so it doesn't just go back to the old way if and when the political winds ever change.
00:57:18.000Well, the discussion that we had on Loper Bright earlier was significant because when we're following the best reading of the law, And this is the first administration that has come in since the Loper Bright decision.
00:57:30.000The pendulum can't just swing back and they could go back to the rules that they did of the past because there is just one best meaning, best reading of the law.
00:57:43.000Codifying our changes, as you just pointed out, is a big deal.
00:57:47.000Who you elect to be in charge of Congress could make a big difference because when I say best reading of the law, well, the law could change.
00:57:58.000You can have a pendulum swing where it's not just a new administrator of EPA, but it could be a totally new alignment of who's in charge of the House and the Senate.
00:58:06.000So, that piece, getting involved in the decision of who your representatives are, that is key.
00:58:15.000I would also say, just for getting caught up to speed on what we've been working on, go look for that press release from January, the one year anniversary of President Trump's term in office, our list of our top 500 environmental accomplishments.
00:58:32.000Promote it and let's keep working on getting more of that done.
00:58:36.000While also, I would say the other piece is you fight for everything that you want fixed now because these opportunities I mean, it feels like a once in a lifetime moment where you have a president, he went through four years in office, four years to reflect on it, survived multiple assassination attempts, won all the battleground states, won the popular vote.
00:59:00.000He is someone who is so locked in on not just for him, but his entire team.
00:59:06.000Making the most of every single moment of every single day to get as much done as possible.
00:59:12.000If there is anyone out there across America, you care about anything that you want to see an agency or this administration get done, ask us to do it.
00:59:23.000I mean, I go to these groups where I say, I don't want to know what the top thing is on your list for me to do.
00:59:29.000I don't want to know the top three things on your list.
00:59:32.000If your list has 64 different asks for EPA, give me your entire list.
00:59:41.000The biggest regret that you should have, and the biggest regret that I would have, is to get to the end of this term and it turns out that there are things that we could have done, but you just didn't ask for it.
00:59:54.000This is an administration extraordinarily focused and motivated to get everything done possible every single day we're here in this office.
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