Oh Well!! Shitstain's EPA Nominee Chairs Bible-Thumping TX Fracking Billionaire's America First Policy Institute
The former Republican congressperson selected by Donald Trump to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, has the backing of a religious-right fracking billionaire from Texas.
Zeldin is currently a chair at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a conservative think tank co-founded by Tim Dunn, founder of the fracking company CrownQuest, one of the biggest privately owned oil producers in the country.
Dunn, who has a net worth of $2.2 billion, was one of Trump’s biggest donors, contributing $5 million through his company to the Super PAC Make America Great Again. He’s been vocal about wanting Trump to reverse policies aimed at slowing climate change. “It would be ideal if we could get rid of this ‘CO2 as a pollutant’ business,” Dunn said at an AFPI event in 2023, stating that he hoped a Trump presidency could use executive orders “to curb all this silliness about CO2 emissions.”
Zeldin, a former House representative who campaigned unsuccessfully to be governor of New York in 2022, doesn’t have a lengthy track record in climate change and energy. But climate advocates predict that as head of the EPA he will loyally implement policies favorable to oil and gas producers. “He will move to execute a fossil-fuel agenda on behalf of the far-right and billionaire donors like Dunn,” Pete Sikora, climate campaigns director for the nonprofit New York Communities for Change, told DeSmog.
The AFPI didn’t respond to questions from DeSmog about Zeldin and Dunn. Zeldin posted on X this week that he is “looking forward to getting straight to work as part of President Trump’s Cabinet to unleash US energy dominance, make America the AI capital of the world, bring American auto jobs back home, and so much more.”
Prior to Trump picking him as EPA head, Zeldin was appointed chair of the AFPI’s China Policy Initiative and the group’s Pathway to 2025 initiative, which aimed to promote “policy innovation, America First messaging opportunities, coalition building, and the preparation of a battle plan for the next conservative administration.”
EDIT
https://www.desmog.com/2024/11/13/trump-epa-pick-lee-zeldin-backed-by-texas-fracking-billionaire-tim-dunn/
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