December 8, 2025
The Honorable Shelley Moore Capito Chair
Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works
410 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Sheldon Whitehouse
Ranking Member
Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works
410 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
The Honorable Brett Guthrie
Chair
House Committee on Energy & Commerce
2125 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Frank Pallone
Ranking Member
House Committee on Energy & Commerce
2125 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Chair Capito, Chair Guthrie, Ranking Member Whitehouse, and Ranking Member Pallone:
On behalf of our 1.6 million members—moms, dads, and caregivers across the country who are fighting to protect children from air and climate pollution—I am writing to urge the House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to exercise their oversight responsibilities and conduct hearings on the corruption of EPA’s mission under the leadership of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. Never in EPA’s history has an Administrator—Democratic or Republican—so recklessly pursued an agenda in opposition to everything the agency stands for.
EPA’s mission is simple: protect human health and the environment. Yet under Administrator Zeldin’s leadership, we’ve seen the opposite. Within one short year, Administrator Zeldin has unleashed an aggressive deregulatory campaign that would result in a massive increase in both air and climate pollution.
Administrator Zeldin’s actions will lead to more mercury from coal-fired power plants. Methylmercury is a potent neurotoxin that damages the developing fetal brain, and no amount is safe. His actions also mean more soot (or particle pollution) in the air we breathe, which is lethal because particulate matter passes from our lungs into our bloodstreams, our hearts, and our brains. And newer research is linking this pollution to the inflammation that cancer cells thrive on. Administrator Zeldin’s EPA also wants to make it easier for thousands of toxic chemicals—chemicals like formaldehyde, dioxins, and phthalates, which have been linked to cancers and hormone disruption—to get into the products we buy and use and live with every single day. Meanwhile, cancer rates among young adults are increasing.
Administrator Zeldin’s vision for the U.S includes more toxic tailpipe pollution from trucks, buses, and cars. The transportation sector is the largest source of climate pollution in the U.S. and a significant source of other health-harming pollutants. Zeldin has proposed to eliminate all existing limits on greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes reaching back more than 15 years. Administrator Zeldin also threw open the doors for industrial sources to request presidential exemptions from protections against hazardous air pollution, resulting in 50 of the nation’s largest petrochemical facilities receiving a two-year exemption from longstanding environmental and health laws—effectively, a “free pass to pollute.”
Administrator Zeldin is working to dismantle the agency’s long-standing science-based finding that climate pollution endangers public health and well-being, as part of his effort to abdicate EPA’s responsibility for regulating—or even monitoring—climate pollution from vehicles and other sources. And Administrator Zeldin has prioritized the buildout of power-hungry AI data centers across the country—many fueled by polluting methane gas—at the same time as he has delayed deadlines for oil and gas sources to reduce methane pollution.
Although these actions are in line with some industry interests, it’s hard to see how this EPA-sanctioned pollution spree protects human health or the environment. In fact, Administrator Zeldin’s actions, which will lead to more asthma attacks, more pregnancy complications, more dementia, and more cancer, amount to an attack on public health.
Further, the toll of these rollbacks contributes to a growing and alarming affordability crisis. Americans’ medical bills will grow. Health insurance will become even more expensive. So too will the costs of electricity, food, and home insurance. Moreover, the delay in taking measures to adapt to a changing climate—which cascades out of the rollback of the Endangerment Finding—will cost American taxpayers billions of dollars. One recent study by the University of Maryland projects that the economic costs of Administrator Zeldin’s rollbacks of health protections, together with other actions the administration has taken to dismantle clean air and clean energy programs, will be in the billions annually, with a $1.1 trillion loss in the country’s GDP by 2035.
I understand that priorities shift with changing administrations, but Administrator Zeldin’s disregard of both congressional mandates and his agency’s mission represents the most radical departure in EPA history. Christine Todd Whitman, who led EPA under President George W. Bush, has expressed concerns that “this administration is endangering all of our lives—ours, our children, our grandchildren.” Dr. Howard Frumkin, Director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under President George W. Bush, has said that because of budget cuts and Administrator Zeldin’s rollbacks, “Americans will die needlessly.”
As parents, we do everything we can for our children, but we can’t do it alone. We rely on our government—including EPA and Congress—to do their jobs, and EPA’s job is to protect human health and the environment. Congress has tasked EPA with clear mandates to achieve this goal through laws like the Clean Air Act. By ignoring these laws, Administrator Zeldin has violated the trust placed in him by Congress and the American people. We urge you to exercise your oversight authority to hold Administrator Zeldin accountable and ensure that EPA is fulfilling its core mission.
Sincerely,
Dominique Browning
Co-Founder and Director, Moms Clean Air Force