At 1: 08 PM ET on Monday, a new round of scrutiny landed on Lee Zeldin as Make America Healthy Again advocates pressed the Environmental Protection Agency ahead of an imminent “MAHA agenda, ” while a separate coalition of environmental and public health organizations called for him to resign or be fired.
What are MAHA activists demanding from Lee Zeldin?
More than three dozen Make America Healthy Again leaders sent a letter to the EPA administrator that publicly lays out, for the first time, what they have sought in closed-door meetings over the past few months. The letter lists eight action items for the agency’s forthcoming MAHA agenda and centers on pesticides, PFAS—described by the advocates as “forever chemicals”—and plastics.
The advocates also point to what they call a “profound contradiction” between the Trump administration’s MAHA commitments and “the chemical industry lobbyists who occupy senior leadership positions at the agency. ” In the letter, they frame the moment as a decision point for the agency: “The EPA must choose whether it will uphold a chemical status quo or honor the promise to make this country healthy again, ” the letter states. “The public is watching. Families are organizing. Scientists are sounding the alarm. This movement will no longer accept empty rhetoric without real results. ”
The push comes as the EPA prepares to release its MAHA agenda, a document the advocates see as a test of whether their priorities translate into agency action.
Why are public health groups calling for Lee Zeldin to resign or be fired?
On Tuesday, more than 160 environmental and public health organizations called for the EPA administrator to resign or be fired, arguing the agency has moved away from its core mission under his leadership. In an open letter organized by Climate Action Campaign and Moms Clean Air Force, the groups wrote: “No [EPA] administrator in history – Democratic or Republican – has so brazenly betrayed the agency’s core mission. ” The letter adds: “EPA’s foremost purpose is to protect human health and the environment. With Administrator Lee Zeldin at the helm, EPA has abandoned its mission, creating damage that will take decades to address. ”
The organizations argue that under his leadership the EPA has rolled back or weakened dozens of environmental protections aimed at slowing the climate crisis, protecting clean air and water, and safeguarding Americans’ health. The letter also accuses the agency of cutting funding and staff and of structuring decisions to favor corporate polluters “at the expense of our health. ”
Among the signers were local and national organizations including Public Citizen, Sierra Club, Earthjustice, GreenRoots, GreenLatinos, and Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which signed the letter, criticized the direction of the agency included with the call: “The public deserves an EPA administrator who will face the challenge of the climate crisis and fossil fuel and toxic pollution head-on with proven policy solutions, not actively serve as an agent of destruction beholden to the whims of oil, gas, and chemical industry executives and an authoritarian, anti-science US president. ”
What has the EPA said, and what happens next?
The Tuesday letter follows a January petition signed by leaders of the Robert F Kennedy Jr-led Make America Healthy Again movement that called for the administrator to be fired over environmental rollbacks. In the weeks after that petition, he attended a MAHA-focused holiday party, invited movement supporters for a meeting at the EPA’s headquarters, and said the agency would adopt a “MAHA agenda. ”
He has also faced criticism from current and former EPA staff. In June, staff signed an EPA “Declaration of Dissent” that criticized his treatment of the agency’s scientific programming and workers. Some staff were suspended or fired for signing it, though agency officials later found their behavior did not violate ethics rules.
Brigit Hirsch, an EPA spokesperson, defended the administration’s posture: the agency “has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country. ”
More broadly, the Trump administration has defended its environmental rollbacks as compatible with protecting the environment while boosting industry.
Looking ahead, the administrator is scheduled to serve as the opening speaker next month for a climate-focused conference in Washington, DC convened by the Heartland Institute.
In the near term, the focal point for both supporters and critics is the imminent EPA MAHA agenda—an expected milestone that, in different ways, both camps are using to measure what Lee Zeldin’s EPA will prioritize, enforce, and defend.
