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Former Rep. Lee Zeldin appears before the Senate Environment and...

Former Rep. Lee Zeldin appears before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee at his confirmation hearing on Jan. 16. Credit: AP/Mark Schiefelbein

Lee Zeldin, a former state senator who also represented the 1st Congressional District, is now the head of the Environmental Protection Agency for President Donald Trump. Not since William Casey of Roslyn Harbor served six years as director of the CIA in the Reagan administration has a Long Islander served in a presidential cabinet.

Congratulations are in order.

As a resident of Shirley, Zeldin knows firsthand our region is among those most vulnerable to climate change, and understands the urgency of the EPA's work to ensure clean air and clean water and advance climate research. The editorial board has both supported and criticized Zeldin in his many endeavors. He's smart and ambitious and he ran an impressive but losing campaign for New York governor in 2022. He surely knows that carrying out extreme policies in his new job could be a career-ending proposition. Zeldin should not be a roadblock in the nation's transition to clean energy. 

Zeldin is not the only person with strong LI connections to emerge as a leader in the new administration. Howard Lutnick, Trump's pick as secretary of commerce, grew up in Roslyn and has several homes in the Hamptons but now votes in Manhattan. Lutnick's successful career at the investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald has made him fabulously wealthy and presumably not susceptible to conflicts of interest. However, his cheerleading for the cryptocurrency industry should be watched closely to make sure his governance of this alternative to the dollar is aboveboard.

But Trump's nomination of a former Long Islander to lead the most powerful law enforcement agency in the world should be denied. The choice of Kashyap "Kash" Patel, an unserious man, to be FBI director is a serious threat to the nation. The FBI head is not a member of a president's cabinet; the job's 10-year term was established so the bureau would be led in a nonpartisan way by someone beyond reproach. Patel is a self-aggrandizing provocateur cashing in on his closeness to Trump and the extreme right. He wormed his way into being a close confidant by conjuring up conspiracy theories to support Trump's view of a Justice Department weaponized against him. 

Patel grew up on Long Island and graduated in 1998 from Garden City High School. His early career doesn't suggest his crusade as a MAGA warrior. In his high school yearbook, he denounces racism as humanity's most evil of sins. In answers to his Senate questionnaire, Patel says his legal career benefited from diversity programs and that he worked in Florida as a public defender. He promises to cleanse the FBI of its "political and personal agenda" but has yet to dissuade anyone that he wants unchecked power to do exactly what he criticizes. Patel is unqualified and temperamentally unsuited to lead the FBI.

Hometown representation in the federal government can be a good thing, but only when it comes from those who have earned it.

MEMBERS OF THE EDITORIAL BOARD are experienced journalists who offer reasoned opinions, based on facts, to encourage informed debate about the issues facing our community.

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