AMIDON eric cos
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GRNWIRE
Trump appointees
By Ellie Borst, Robin Bravender | 01/18/2025 12:38 PM EST
Former Trump EPA officials and ex-staffers to Lee Zeldin are now listed in the agency’s staff directory as political appointees.
Former Trump administration officials and allies of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead EPA have popped up in that agency’s online staff directory as political appointees.
Those officials, a mix of senior EPA aides from Trump’s first term and staffers with ties to EPA nominee Lee Zeldin, are on the team of Trump appointees who have been dispatched to that agency, two people familiar with the transition told POLITICO’s E&E News.
The listings in EPA’s staff directory come as Trump prepares to take office Monday and fill out some 4,000 political appointments across the government. The incoming administration has been secretive about the personnel working on the transition and preparing to serve as Trump political appointees in the new administration.
EPA referred questions about political appointees to the Trump transition team. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment.
But it appears as though some former Zeldin staffers and former Trump officials have officially signed up to work at the agency.
Among the names of Trump first-term appointees listed in the EPA staff directory is Nancy Beck, who served as principal deputy assistant administrator for EPA’s chemicals office during Trump’s first administration. Beck declined to comment for this story.
Justin Schwab, who served as EPA’s deputy general counsel during the Trump administration, is also listed in the agency’s staff directory as a political appointee.
Other former Trump officials listed in the EPA directory: Steven Cook, who served as deputy assistant administrator for EPA’s waste office, and Lynn Dekleva, who served as associate deputy assistant administrator for new chemicals.
The EPA political appointees also includeAlexander Dominguez, who served as an adviser for EPA’s air office in Trump’s first term; Catherine Paige Hanson, who was an EPA financial adviser under Trump; Jessica Kramer, who worked in the Trump-era EPA water office; Walter Scott Mason, who was the director for EPA’s American Indian Environmental Office under Trump; William Chad McIntosh, who led EPA’s Office of International and Tribal Affairs; and Victoria Tran, who served as a policy adviser in EPA’s enforcement and compliance office under Trump.
Travis Voyles — who served in Trump’s EPA before he became Virginia’s secretary of natural and historic resources under Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) — is also among those now listed as an EPA appointee.
Aaron Szabo, who served as senior counsel for the White House Council on Environmental Quality and senior policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget, is also listed on EPA’s directory.
As Zeldin awaits Senate confirmation to become EPA’s administrator, his staffers and allies also appear in the EPA staff directory as political appointees.
They include Eric Amidon, who worked for Zeldin in various positions over the past decade, including as Zeldin’s congressional chief of staff. Additional Zeldin allies listed in the staff directory include Thomas Corlett, who worked on Zeldin’s 2022 campaign for governor, and Zeldin communications aide Daniel Gall.
One person familiar with the transition confirmed that Amidon, Corlett and Gall were part of Trump’s incoming EPA team. A second person familiar with the transition said that Jaide Barja, who served as a legislative assistant in Zeldin’s congressional office and appears in the directory, is also on the Trump team.
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On Thursday the environmental groups filed a separate motion asking the court to block the E.P.A. from moving forward with a plan to repeal a scientific determination made by the government in 2009 that climate pollution harms public health and welfare. That assessment, known as the endangerment finding, is the basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.
Officials with the Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment. An E.P.A. official said the agency does not comment on current or pending litigation.
The authors of the Department of Energy report were Steven E. Koonin, a physicist and author of a best-selling book that calls climate science “unsettled”; Judith Curry, a climatologist who has cautioned of alarmism about warming; John Christy, an atmospheric scientist who doubts the extent to which human activity has caused global warming; Roy Spencer, a meteorologist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville; and Ross McKitrick, an economics professor at the University of Guelph in Canada.
Dr. Koonin said in an email that he is not an attorney and not qualified to offer an opinion on the lawsuit. Dr. Curry said in an email that the Climate Working Group “provided technical information to the DOE, not policy advice.” Dr. Christy and Mr. McKitrick declined to comment, and Dr. Spencer did not respond to a request for comment.
Documents obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund under public records laws show that Dr. Koonin began contacting Trump administration officials within weeks of President Trump’s inauguration. In one email exchange, Dr. Koonin reached out in February to Mr. Zeldin’s chief of staff, Eric Amidon.
“I was told (through a mutual friend of mine and the Administrator’s) that I should contact you to set up a meeting with Mr. Zeldin,” Dr. Koonin wrote. “The subject is to offer technical assistance from me and colleagues in the review of the Endangerment Finding.”
Mr. Amidon replied that the agency was “moving right along on this topic” and said he would set up a call for Dr. Koonin with E.P.A. officials. On Friday Dr. Koonin said the call never occurred, writing in an email, “A search of my records shows no further contact with the EPA (whether by phone, video, or in person)” after the Feb. 16 email exchange.
Dr. Koonin did send Mr. Amidon a memo of what he called “inconvenient truths” on climate change, including a claim widely rejected by mainstream scientists that “there is no basis to conclude that human emissions enhance natural ‘greenhouse’ warming in any amount.”
Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities.
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