Trump’s proposed EPA leadership stacked with lobbyists and attorneys

Donald Trump is stacking his proposed Environmental Protection Agency leadership with former industry lobbyists, executives, and attorneys who have spent their careers attacking protections covering everything from water quality to greenhouse gas emissions to toxic chemicals.

A Guardian review of new political appointees also finds the president is largely reappointing officials from his first term. Since 2016, while working at the EPA or for industry, environmental campaigners say these veterans have led efforts to shred Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, kneecap drinking water limits for toxic PFAS, ram through new chemicals without proper review, undo an asbestos ban, or defend the nation’s biggest polluters.

The chemical and air divisions will in part be led by lobbyists from the American Chemistry Council and American Petroleum Institute, two top industry trade groups. Meanwhile, attorneys who have vowed to cripple the agency’s career staff, which they viewed as an impediment to shredding regulations during Trump’s first term, will head up the EPA’s legal team.

Public health advocates fear “irreversible damage” to the EPA, said Erik Olson, a senior adviser to the NRDC Action Fund who has lobbied for stronger environmental regulations.

“It’s not a surprise, but this is the hostile takeover of the EPA by the chemical and fossil fuel industry, and that’s unfortunately going to have a massive, problematic long-term effect on public health and environment,” Olson added.

The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Some of the officials have to be approved by the Senate.

Air division leadership appointees who would probably spell trouble for the agency’s efforts to address climate change include two former lobbyists with the American Petroleum Institute. Alex Dominguez lobbied for industry on renewable fuel standards and against subsidies for electric vehicles, among other issues, while Aaron Szabo helped write Obama’s climate rules, then helped shred them under Trump. He has since lobbied for oil and chemical giants.

Meanwhile, Justin Schwab, Trump’s named deputy general counsel, is a conservative Federalist Society ally who allegedly helped write the Project 2025 EPA chapter that called for gutting agency staff, and who was said to be a driving force behind the first Trump EPA’s dismantling of the Clean Power Plan. The Obama era plan would have meaningfully started reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but Schwab, who has represented polluters like the energy giant Southern Co, replaced it with an industry-backed plan that was considered by critics to be intentionally designed to do little to reduce emissions.

The Project 2025 chapter also calls for an attack on a 2009 supreme court ruling that greenhouse gases are a public health threat, and the EPA is legally bound to address it. Already, the EPA’s new head disputed that the ruling requires the agency to act. Undoing the ruling would strike at the heart of the EPA’s ability to address climate change.

First-term Trump EPA officials who are being reappointed have said they learned from their mistakes, and will be more effective in their attacks on regulation during the second time around.

“The biggest difference is we have a plan from Day One,” the former EPA chief of staff Mandy Gunasekara told Politico in July. “We’re going to start implementing it, and we won’t be as susceptible to process problems that really sunk a couple of those final regulatory proposals and actions we took at the tail end of the administration.”

The EPA’s chemical division, meanwhile, would in part be helmed by Trump veterans who are also former top industry executives. Nancy Beck, named a senior adviser to the agency’s office of chemical safety, has helped lead industry’s charge against new drinking water limits for PFAS, or “forever chemicals”, that are considered among the most toxic human-made substances, and which are estimated to be contaminating drinking water for at least 143 million people. While at the previous Trump EPA and as an American Chemistry Council lobbyist, she helped weaken rules around asbestos, methylene chloride, lead, PFAS and PCBs.

Beck will be joined in chemical division leadership by Lynn Anne Dekleva, a former Trump EPA official and DuPont executive. Along with Beck, she was accused of helping lead a broader effort in the chemical division to interfere in agency science, including altering reports, for political reasons.

Meanwhile, David Fatouhi, a Federalist Society ally, will probably return as the EPA’s top attorney. After working in the position during the first Trump term, he spent the last four years at Gibson Dunn, a global firm that represents major industry players. He has touted his record defending top polluters from lawsuits and EPA enforcement action. Among other suits, he took part in the legal challenge to the Biden administration’s asbestos ban on behalf of an auto industry trade group.

Jessica Kramer, a former Trump water office appointee, is listed in the EPA’s staff directory. She was formerly water counsel for the Republican Shelley Moore-Capito, ranking member of the Senate committee on environment and public works who often leads congressional assaults on EPA’s clean water rules. Kramer has since worked for a major industry lobbying firm, where her clients included utility industry trade groups that have opposed virtually all clean water rules, including those for PFAS and lead.

The consequences for the attacks on the EPA and other agencies are “all connected”, said the former EPA official Kyla Bennett, now with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility non-profit.

“By cutting the Clean Water Act and wetland protection, flooding is going to be worse, and by getting rid of Fema there won’t be money to rebuild your house when it burns down or is flooded out,” she said. “If you take the holistic views on putting oil and gas execs in charge of the EPA while simultaneously gutting the agency of scientists, and getting rid of Noaa and Fema – it’s a recipe for disaster.”