Action Alerts

Urge your senators to be strong on the environment during the confirmation process

What's At Stake

The Senate will hold confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees for key leadership positions impacting the environment. These nominees will head federal agencies that play an important role in safeguarding our public lands and waters, protecting the right to clean air, clean water, and a toxic-free environment, and preserving biodiversity.

Our Senators have the constitutional duty to hold these nominees accountable to ensure that they act in the best interest of people across this country, not corporations. We need you to make sure they ask tough questions.

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Rather than expertise, these nominees were chosen for their personal allegiances to Trump and have promised to derail policies that protect people and our planet in favor of industry profits.

Here’s who he’s chosen to determine the future of YOUR environment and health:

  • Lee Zeldin is a former congressman from New York and is Trump’s pick to serve as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. With scant experience on environmental issues, Zeldin will oversee the development and enforcement of important environmental protections that safeguard our clean air and water and hold polluters accountable. Additionally, he will be in charge of the agency that determines how toxic chemicals can be used in our food, air, and water.
  • Chris Wright is the CEO of Colorado-based fracking company Liberty Energy and is the nominee to lead the Department of Energy. If confirmed, the country will have the CEO of a fossil fuel company in charge of the agency that regulates energy production. He’ll oversee the future of clean energy deployment, key climate pollution reduction efforts, and the implementation of Inflation Reduction Act funding and energy efficiency standards. Wright has never worked in government or held public office and has a history of denying climate change and government efforts to mitigate it.
  • Governor Doug Burgum is the current Governor of North Dakota and is the nominee to lead the Department of the Interior. Burgum has strong ties to the fossil fuel industry and helped arrange a meeting between Trump and fossil fuel executives during which Trump offered to overturn dozens of environmental rules and regulations in exchange for $1 billion in campaign contributions. If confirmed, he’ll oversee the future of our public lands and waters, endangered species protections, and the government’s relationship with Tribes. He will also serve as the President’s ‘energy czar’ and lead the National Energy Council, giving him broad authority and discretion to promote fossil fuel development and production.
  • Brooke Rollins is a former Trump administration official picked to head the Department of Agriculture. After leaving the Trump administration, Rollins helped found the America First Policy Institute and played an important role in authoring the unpopular Project 2025, the policy playbook outlining a deregulatory agenda to strip away our rights to clean air, clean water, and a healthy planet.
  • Russell Vought is Trump’s pick to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), an office situated in the White House that oversees the federal budget, federal rulemaking, and the federal workforce. He served in the position under the first Trump administration. After leaving, he coauthored Project 2025.

Act now and tell your Senators to hold these nominees accountable by asking them tough questions on climate change, biodiversity, and environmental protections before their confirmation vote.

Key nominees in the Trump administration’s second term. (Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA 2.0)
Key nominees in the Trump administration’s second term. (Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Your Actions Matter

Your messages make a difference, even if we have leaders who don't want to listen. Here's why.

You level the playing field.

Elected officials pay attention when they see that we are paying attention. Read more.

They may be hearing from industry lobbyists left and right, but hearing the stories of their constituents — that’s your power.

Our legislators serve at the pleasure of the people who gave them their job — you.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. When you contact your elected official, you’re putting a face and a name on an issue.

Whether or not you voted for them, they work for you, for the duration of their term.

Make sure your elected officials know whose community and whose values they represent. (Find your local, state, and federal elected officials.)

Your action is with us in court.

If a federal agency finalizes a harmful action, the record of public comments provides a basis for bringing them into court. Read more.

Throughout each of the public comment periods we alert you to, Earthjustice’s attorneys are researching and writing in-depth, technical comments to submit — detailing how the regulation could and should be stronger to protect the environment, our communities, and our planet.

We need you to join us — your specific experiences, knowledge, and voice are crucial to add to the Administrative Record through the comment periods.

Lawsuits we file that challenge weak or harmful federal regulations rely on what was submitted during the comment period. The court can only look at documents that are in the Administrative Record — including the public comments — to decide if the agency did something improper.

Your actions aid our litigation. Taking action and submitting comments during a comment period is substantively important.

It’s the law.

Federal agencies must pause what they’re doing and ask for — and consider — your comment. Read more.

Many of us may have never heard of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but laws like these require our government to ask the public to weigh in before agencies adopt or change regulations.

Regulations essentially describe how federal agencies will carry out laws — including decisions that could undermine science, or weaken safeguards on public health.

Public comments are collected at various points throughout the federal government’s rulemaking process, including when a regulation is proposed and finalized. (Learn about the rulemaking process.) These comments become part of the official, legal public record — the “Administrative Record.”

When the public responds with a huge outpouring of support for environmental protections, these individual messages collectively undercut politicians' attempts to claim otherwise.

What this means is each of us can take a role in shaping the rules our government creates — and ensuring those rules are fair and effective.