Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin revealed how federal dollars spent on “environmental justice” often simply perpetuate a wasteful yet lucrative cycle of environmental activism.
Zeldin explained on The Alex Marlow Show how his agency has stopped the scamming by slashing wasteful spending, creating savings far beyond the EPA’s annual budget.
“It’s the principle that there needs to be a zero tolerance policy for any waste and abuse,” Zeldin told host Alex Marlow. “It’s also the principle of being able to do more with less, and we proved over the course of our first 15 months here that we can achieve extraordinary savings here at the agency.”
EPA’s annual operating budget at the time of Zeldin’s arrival was “about $10 billion,” yet he said, “Over the first year that I was in this position, we saved $30 billion.”
“In 2024, this agency obligated and spent over $60 billion, and we were able to cancel grants and contracts. We did real estate consolidation [and] staff efficiencies with an agency-wide reorganization,” he explained. “We closed an EPA museum that nobody knew about or almost no one even visited.”
Zeldin pointed to an exchange with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in a congressional hearing regarding wasteful solar grants the self-proclaimed climate change champion supported.
“We had examples where the grant was going through up to four different passthroughs, where each passthrough entity was getting at least 15% to administer their part of the passthrough,” Zeldin said. “I mean, a lot of this is just inexcusable.”
“The money that gets appropriated in the name of environmental justice to remediate an environmental issue, but then the dollar goes to an activist group to train other activist groups to come to D.C. and advocate for the next dollar to go to them to go out and be activists, like, wait, I thought we were spending this dollar to remediate an environmental issue,” he explained further. “So yeah, it’s about doing more with less, and we have found extraordinary ways to save the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.”
The Alex Marlow Show, hosted by Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow, broadcasts coast to coast on weekdays from noon to 1 p.m. Eastern on the Salem Radio Network stations. You can listen to the radio show online here. The show also airs at 9:00 p.m. Eastern on the Salem TV news channel. Marlow’s podcast, The Alex Marlow Show Presented by Breitbart News, is released weekdays at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. You can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Rumble, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
Bradley Jaye is Political Editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter and Instagram @BradleyAJaye.
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