Top political appointees are already at the E.P.A. preparing to erase the agencyβs climate rules and pollution controls. Many of them have tried it before.
Legal experts said the president was testing the boundaries of executive power with aggressive orders designed to stop the country from transitioning to renewable energy.
Mr. Zeldin, a Trump loyalist, would be charged with dismantling climate rules and perhaps the agency itself. He faced questions from the Senate Thursday.
State regulators said the measures would probably have been rejected by the Trump administration and that they would focus on homegrown legal strategies instead.