President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin have made big promises to roll back environmental regulations — and they’ve stacked the agency with appointees with prior experience fighting a range of rules, including ones to rein in chemical exposure.
Several top EPA officials have spent the past four years leading legal challenges or lobbying against landmark environmental and public health health regulations finalized during the Biden administration. Among them is the agency’s ban on cancer-causing chrysotile asbestos and a rule putting polluters on the hook for “forever chemicals” cleanup costs.
A rundown of the Trump administration’s appointees in EPA’s legal, chemicals, land and water offices could signal which rules are most vulnerable to rollbacks.
The nominee to be EPA’s second in command, David Fotouhi, along with agency deputy general counsel, Nathaniel Tisa, worked as attorneys at the law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, representing major trade associations in litigation against two EPA rules restricting uses of carcinogens methylene chloride and asbestos.
