Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) put the smackdown on President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Lee Zeldin, during a hearing this week, over the administration's move to suspend and slash environmental grants across the board, including those vital to mitigating lead exposure threats in children.
Zeldin, who previously served as a GOP congressman from Long Island and mounted a failed bid for governor of New York in 2022, grew visibly annoyed at Schiff's line of questioning and tried to dismissively swat aside his concerns.
"I understand that you are an aspiring fiction writer," said Zeldin. "I can see why."
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“Oh, well I understand your view that you can cut half of the agency and it won't affect people's health or their water or their air. That to me is a big fiction, Mr. Zeldin,” shot back Schiff.
The senator wasn't finished, bringing up Santa Ana, a lower-income Southern California city where residents have struggled with lead contamination for years.
“If your children were drinking water in Santa Ana, Mr. Zeldin, maybe you wouldn't be so cavalier about if there was lead in their water. Maybe you would give a damn instead of coming in here and suggesting that any grant that takes lead out of the water must be 'waste fraud or abuse' because you need the money for a tax cut for rich people, because you're totally beholden to the oil industry.”
"You could give a rat's a-- about how much cancer your agency causes," Schiff added, as Zeldin continued trying to talk over him.
The EPA is not the only area of the Trump administration that is pulling back on funding for lead mitigation; under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Department of Health and Human Services has crippled lead management programs including one helping the city of Milwaukee, and in a recent congressional hearing, he acted like he didn't know this was going on.
The combative exchange between Schiff and Zeldin comes after Zeldin got another chewing out by Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-CA), who pointed out that even as Zeldin was claiming Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants were being suspended over "fraud," Trump administration lawyers admitted in federal court that they had no evidence any such fraud was taking place.
Watch the full exchange below or at the link here.
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