Lee Zeldin

Lee Michael Zeldin (born January 30, 1980) is an American attorney and Republican politician serving as the 17th Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency since January 2025. A native of New York raised in Suffolk County, Zeldin graduated from William Floyd High School before earning a B.A. from the State University of New York at Albany in 2001 and a J.D. from Albany Law School in 2003, becoming the youngest attorney admitted to the New York bar at age 23. He began his public service career in the New York State Assembly, representing the 10th district from 2007 to 2014, after which he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for New York's 1st congressional district, holding the seat from 2015 to 2023. Zeldin enlisted in the U.S. Army shortly after the September 11 attacks, serving 22 years including active duty with the 82nd Airborne Division and as a prosecutor in the Judge Advocate General's Corps, with a deployment to Iraq in 2006 as a captain. In 2022, he secured the Republican nomination for Governor of New York and came within 6 percentage points of defeating incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul in a race that highlighted shifts in the state's political landscape. During his congressional tenure, Zeldin focused on legislation supporting veterans' affairs, border security, and economic growth, while advocating for deregulation and energy independence; his nomination and Senate confirmation as EPA Administrator by a 56-42 vote reflected his alignment with priorities of reducing bureaucratic overreach in environmental policy.

Zeldin was raised in Suffolk County, New York, primarily in the community of Mastic Beach, where he attended Hebrew school as part of his Jewish upbringing in a Reform household with Democratic-leaning grandparents. Of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, his paternal grandfather Abraham was born in Brooklyn to Belarusian Jewish immigrants from Petrikov in the Gomel region. Zeldin graduated from William Floyd High School in Mastic Beach in 1998.

The family resides in Shirley, New York, Zeldin's hometown on Long Island, and maintains an additional home in Washington, D.C. The daughters have attended Hebrew school at a local temple.

Lee Zeldin was born on January 30, 1980, in East Meadow, New York, to Ashkenazi Jewish parents. His mother, Merrill Schwartz, served as a fourth-grade teacher at a yeshiva in Brooklyn, and Zeldin is the grandson of an Orthodox rabbi as well as grandsons of Conservative and Reform rabbis. Raised in Suffolk County with a Reform upbringing, Zeldin had a bar mitzvah and maintains family ties to Lubavitcher Hasidic roots.