Trump makes selections for key positions | The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump on Monday named former New York congressman Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency as he continues to build out his future administration with loyal supporters.

Zeldin, a Republican who mounted a failed bid for governor of New York in 2022, will “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses,” Trump said in a statement. Zeldin also will maintain “the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet,” Trump said.

Trump’s statement misidentified the name of the agency Zeldin was picked to lead, labeling it the Environmental Protective Agency.

Zeldin, who left Congress in January 2023, was a surprising pick for the role. His public appearances, both in his own campaigns and on behalf of Trump, often had him speaking about issues such as the military, national security, antisemitism, U.S.-Israel relations, immigration and crime.

He was among the Republicans in Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 election results. While in Congress, he did not serve on committees with oversight of environmental policy and had a lifetime score of 14% from the League of Conservation Voters during his eight years in Congress.

In the 2022 governor’s race, Zeldin vowed to reverse a fracking ban imposed by Democrats.

In an interview Monday on Fox News Channel, Zeldin, 44, said that he will seek to ensure that the United States is able to “pursue energy dominance … bring back American jobs to the auto industry and so much more.”

He’s excited to implement Trump’s economic agenda, Zeldin said, adding: “I think the American people are so hungry for it. It’s one of the big reasons why they’re sending him back to the White House.”

In 2016, Zeldin pushed to change the designation of about 150 square miles of federal waters in Long Island Sound to state jurisdiction for New York and Rhode Island. He wanted to open the area to striped bass fishing.

Zeldin said at the time that he wanted to restore local control and common sense to fishery management. He later pushed to allow striped bass fishing in an amendment to a federal spending bill. Environmental groups criticized the amendment, which they said risked overfishing in the area.

Trump often pointed to Zeldin’s performance in the 2022 gubernatorial race, when the Republican did far better than had been expected against Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul. While Trump didn’t win New York state in last week’s election, he did far better than he had during previous elections, particularly in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens.

New York Republican chair Ed Cox said Zeldin’s surprise appointment was “a testament to President Trump’s commitment to revitalizing the original mission of the EPA — an agency created … under President Richard Nixon to protect our nation’s environment.”

On the environment, Zeldin said in 2016 that he disagreed with then-candidate Trump’s call to eliminate the EPA. He told a candidate forum on Long Island that he saw “a need to improve the agency,” including bettering its relationship with Congress and deferring to lawmakers on some regulations, “which is very different from advocating to eliminate it.”

Ally at UN

The announcement came after Trump named New York Rep. Elise Stefanik to serve as his ambassador to the United Nations, picking a loyal ally with little foreign policy experience to represent the U.S. at the international organization.

“Elise is an incredibly strong, tough and smart America First fighter,” Trump said in a statement Monday announcing his pick for the role — his first selection that will require Senate confirmation.

Stefanik, 40, who serves as House Republican Conference Chair, has long been one of Trump’s most loyal allies in the House, and was among those discussed as a potential vice presidential choice.

She will be thrown into the world body’s deep divisions from the wars in the Mideast and Ukraine to reining in nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran.

She will also come face-to-face almost daily in the U.N. Security Council with the ambassadors of Russia and China whose countries are now strongly allied and looking warily at a second Trump presidency — and sometimes with their counterparts from North Korea and Iran.

Stefanik will succeed U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state for Africa who has held the job through the entire Biden administration and has been a member of his Cabinet. Stefanik also will be a member of Trump’s Cabinet, he said in the statement.

In Trump’s first administration, he chose former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who had little foreign experience except for some trade missions, for the U.N. post. She resigned after two years and then challenged Trump for the GOP nomination. Haley was succeeded by then-U.S. ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft, wife of a Kentucky coal magnate, who in 2023 was unsuccessful in her bid for the GOP nomination for governor of the state.

John Bolton, a former U.S. national security adviser under Trump and ambassador to the U.N. during the Bush administration, told The Associated Press that he sees Stefanik as the 2024 version of Haley.

“She wants to run for president in 2028. She realizes she has no foreign policy experience so what better way than to become U.N. ambassador?” Bolton said. “She stays two years, and then away we go.”

Born and raised in upstate New York, Stefanik graduated from Harvard and worked in former President George W. Bush’s White House on the domestic policy council and in the chief of staff’s office.

In 2014, at 30, she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, representing upstate New York. She later became the youngest woman to serve in House leadership.

Stefanik was known early in her tenure as a more moderate conservative voice. But she soon attached herself to the former president, quietly remaking her image into that of a staunch Make America Great Again ally — and seeing her power ascend.

She became the House Republican Conference Chair in 2021.

Stefanik spent years positioning herself as one of Trump’s most trusted allies and confidants on the Hill. She endorsed him in the 2024 race before he had even launched his bid, and aggressively campaigned on his behalf during the GOP primary.

She saw her profile rise after her aggressive questioning of a trio of university presidents over antisemitism on their campuses led to two of their resignations — a performance Trump repeatedly praised.

She also defended him vigorously in both of his impeachment trials and railed against his four criminal indictments, including filing an ethics complaint in New York against the judge who heard his civil fraud case.

While she is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and serves on the coveted House committee that oversees national intelligence, her pick further solidifies Trump’s preference for unconditional loyalty in his second administration over career experience.

One area of foreign policy that Stefanik has been vocal about is Israel.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Stefanik has focused much of her attention on the United Nations, accusing the world body and international organizations of antisemitism for their criticism of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, which has resulted in the death of more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to their Health Ministry.

She has gone as far as calling last month for a “complete reassessment” of U.S. funding for the United Nations, while helping push for the blocking of American support for the U.N. agency that provides humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the region.

Her departure for the United Nations would also mean that Republicans, who are on track to have a razor-thin majority in the House, would be down one crucial vote. But Stefanik’s district is located in a deeply red part of upstate New York, where Republicans are likely guaranteed to win the special election that would take place after she leaves office.

“Republicans will hold this safe Republican seat as part of a Republican majority in the House that will help deliver on President Trump’s historic mandate,” said Ed Cox, the chair of the New York Republican party, in a statement Monday.

Trump did not say much about the U.N. during his campaign, but has generally advocated for a less interventionist foreign policy. He also has repeatedly questioned the utility of international alliances, including NATO, and he has threatened allies with higher tariffs and said he will not protect them unless they contribute more to their own defense.

Trump has also talked about how he initially wanted to select his eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, for the role after he was elected the first time.

“‘You would be a great ambassador to the United Nations, United Nations secretary.’ There’d be nobody to compete with her, I tell you,” he said at a Moms for Liberty Summit in August. “She may be my daughter, but nobody could have competed with her.”

Miller lands policy job

Trump also selected longtime adviser Stephen Miller, an immigration hard-liner, to be the deputy chief of policy in his new administration.

Miller is one of Trump’s longest-serving aides, dating back to his first campaign for the White House. He was a senior adviser in Trump’s first term and has been a central figure in many of his policy decisions, particularly on immigration, including Trump’s move to separate thousands of immigrant families as a deterrence program in 2018.

Miller has also helped craft many of Trump’s hardline speeches, and was often the public face of those policies during Trump’s first term in office and during his campaigns.

Since leaving the White House, Miller has served as the president of America First Legal, an organization of former Trump advisers fashioned as a conservative version of the American Civil Liberties Union, challenging the Biden administration, media companies, universities and others over issues such as freedom of speech and religion and national security.

Miller drew large cheers at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden during the race’s final stretch, telling the crowd, “Your salvation is at hand,” after what he cast as “decades of abuse that has been heaped upon the good people of this nation — their jobs looted and stolen from them and shipped to Mexico, Asia and foreign countries. The lives of their loved ones ripped away from them by illegal aliens, criminal gangs and thugs who don’t belong in this country.”

Because it is not a Cabinet position, the appointment does not need Senate confirmation.

Security adviser named

Trump has also asked Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, a retired Army National Guard officer and war veteran, to be his national security adviser, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter before Trump made a formal announcement.

The move would put Waltz at the forefront of a litany of national security crises, ranging from the ongoing effort to provide weapons to Ukraine and escalating worries about the growing alliance between Russia and North Korea to the persistent attacks in the Middle East by Iran proxies and the push for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah.

Waltz is a three-term GOP congressman from east-central Florida. He served multiple tours in Afghanistan and also worked in the Pentagon as a policy adviser when Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates were defense chiefs.

He is considered hawkish on China, and called for a U.S. boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing due to its involvement in the origin of covid-19 and its ongoing mistreatment of the minority Muslim Uighur population.

Information for this article was contributed by Michelle L. Price, Jill Colvin, Zeke Miller, Matthew Daly, Michael Sisak, Lisa Mascaro, Edith M. Lederer, Thomas Beaumont and Farnoush Amiri of the Associated Press.

   Stephen Miller speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Lititz, Pa., Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
     FILE – Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., speaks at a rally in Concord, N.H., Jan. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)