Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Environmental Safety Company (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin obtained right into a shouting match over company grant cancellations throughout a Senate listening to Wednesday.
Whitehouse was questioning Zeldin over whether or not the EPA performed particular person critiques of the grants it had canceled amid sweeping funding cuts throughout the federal government underneath President Trump.
The Rhode Island Democrat stated the testimony of company officers and statements made in court docket by authorities attorneys contradict the administration’s feedback in regards to the thoroughness of the critiques.
Particularly, he pointed to a court docket doc the place EPA official Travis Voyles said, “On February 25, 2025, I conducted an individualized review of EPA grant programs,” in addition to Zeldin’s personal feedback that the administrator himself had performed a grant assessment.
Whitehouse additionally stated that “On May 16, DOJ [Justice Department] career lawyers … filed a pleading in federal court that conceded that you had not done individualized, grant-by-grant reviews.”
“The issue together with your assertion right here at the moment is that it’s belied by your personal staff’ sworn statements in court docket and by the choice of the Division of Justice to confess that what you say is not true,” Whitehouse instructed Zeldin.
“No, you’re not grasping the fact that we would have multiple employees looking at these grants. That concept just escapes you,” Zeldin fired again.
After a back-and-forth, Zeldin stated, “We’re not going to waste {dollars} simply since you insist on EPA lighting taxpayer {dollars} on hearth.”
“The American taxpayers, they put President Trump in office because of people like you. They have Republicans in charge of the House and Senate because of people like you, because you don’t care about 99 percent of this story,” he continued.
In response, Whitehouse stated what he really desires is for Zeldin to “explain why the Department of Justice lawyers representing EPA in court, under a duty of candor, have said that everything you’ve just said isn’t true.”
Zeldin additionally entered right into a tense trade with Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) over the company’s environmental rollbacks and a selected grant.
Schiff opened his remarks by rattling off rollbacks on the Trump EPA and saying “if you’re successful in eliminating half of our efforts to clean our water and our air, your legacy will be more lung cancer, it’ll be more bladder cancer, it’ll be more head and neck cancer, it’ll be more breast cancer, it’ll be more leukemia and pancreatic cancer, more liver cancer, more skin cancer, more kidney cancer, more testicular cancer, more colorectal cancer, more rare cancers of innumerable varieties.”
He additionally requested a few particular grant associated to stopping lead poisoning in youngsters in Santa Ana, Calif.
As he seemed to be wanting by a listing for that particular grant, Zeldin retorted, “With that wind up, by the way, I understand that you are an aspiring fiction writer. I see why.”
“I understand your view that you can cut half of the agency, and it won’t affect people’s health or their water, their air. That, to me, is a big fiction. Mr. Zeldin,” Schiff replied.
“If your children were drinking water in Santa Ana, Mr. Zeldin, maybe you wouldn’t be so cavalier about whether there was lead in their water,” he continued. “You could give a rat’s ass about how much cancer your agency causes.”
Publicity to guide may cause mind harm in youngsters.
The company has additionally indicated that it plans to loosen restrictions on numerous pollution, together with some that trigger most cancers.
—Up to date at 3:42 p.m. EDT
