Amid global tensions running high, "energy dominance" is moving up to be at least as on par with environmental priorities for Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin.
The longstanding core mission remains for Zeldin's EPA, but his leadership is balancing a far more wide-ranging set of priorities than has historically been the focus for this position.
"Our core mission is protecting human health and the environment," Zeldin said in a televised interview Tuesday night as hailed by President Donald Trump in a Trump social post Wednesday morning. "We want to power the great American comeback, which means, as President Trump has spoken about — clean air, land and water for all Americans — but we can also help unleash energy dominance, make America the AI capital of the world, advance federal corporatism, permitting reform, bringing back American auto jobs.
"These are also demands the American public voted for."
Notably, the Trump Truth Social post highlighted energy dominance, as Zeldin works to balance the historical role of the EPA as serving to be a strict regulator on American businesses for environmental concerns.
Zeldin is taking EPA to a larger mission to incorporate every aspect of the "Trump mandate" along with the environmentalist mission in the department.
"The American public elected President Trump to ensure that we were heeding their economic concerns, promoting consumer freedom to help unleash a golden age of American prosperity," Zeldin said in the televised interview. "All these different agencies, including EPA have some powers, equities, that allow us to deliver on that Trump mandate."
The former New York congressman has echoed Trump's calls for aggressive permitting reform and expansion of domestic energy, saying it can be achieved while maintaining environmental protections.
Trump has repeatedly vowed to roll back Biden-era restrictions on oil, gas and auto manufacturing as part of what he calls the nation's "great American comeback" and the "golden age" of America.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.