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For Immediate Release
December, 16 2020, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
(202) 667-6982
Nomination of Michael Regan Shows Biden's Commitment To Rebuild EPA, Protect Public Health and Advance Environmental Justice
President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Michael Regan as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, The New York Times reports. Regan, 44, currently North Carolina's top environmental official, would be the second
WASHINGTON
President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Michael Regan as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, The New York Times reports. Regan, 44, currently North Carolina's top environmental official, would be the second Black person to lead the agency charged with protecting public health and the environment, after Lisa Jackson, who headed the EPA during President Obama's second term.
Choosing Regan would signal not only Biden's determination to reverse the disastrous environmental rollbacks of the Trump administration but also a commitment to environmental and social justice that the Biden-Harris campaign pledged to make a priority, said EWG President Ken Cook.
"There is no other agency that has seen its mission undermined more during the Trump administration than the EPA," said Cook. "Michael's experience at the state and federal levels, and his deep commitment to public health, are exactly what is required to rebuild the agency, its reputation and its critical mission to ensure clean air and safe drinking water, protect Americans from toxic chemicals and combat the climate crisis."
EWG board member Bill Ross, North Carolina's top environmental regulator from 2001 to 2009, also praised Biden's choice.
"Michael Regan has done an outstanding job as secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality," said Ross. "Under his leadership, an agency that had been demoralized and diminished regained its footing, dealt effectively with major environmental and public health challenges, and has been a leader on environmental justice, climate change and renewable energy. Secretary Regan has displayed the leadership skill set that is sorely needed now at the US EPA, and I am confident that he'll do an outstanding job there."
Regan was appointed secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality by Gov. Roy Cooper in 2017. Before that, he spent more than eight years at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, including as the group's Southeast regional director. Before joining EDF, he worked at the EPA for nearly 10 years, focused mostly on federal air policy.
As DEQ secretary, Regan was instrumental in developing the state's plan to address climate change, including its clean energy plan to make the state carbon neutral by 2050, the first such plan in the Southeast. In 2018, Regan set up DEQ's Environmental Justice and Equity Board to assist the department in its efforts to make sure all communities in the state, regardless of race or income, are afforded the same attention.
Under his leadership, the DEQ won an agreement with Chemours Co. to stop pollution of North Carolina's drinking water with the toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS.
"Few people know more about PFAS and the public health emergency posed by these toxic 'forever chemicals' than Michael Regan," said Cook. "As EPA administrator, he will have a chance to fulfill President-elect Biden's pledge to set a national PFAS drinking water standard, to designate PFAS as hazardous substances, and to get PFAS out of everyday products. He will also have a chance to reduce industrial discharges of PFAS, a challenge he understands very well."
Cook said the past four years have seen EPA turned into a rubber stamp for the anti-science, anti-public health agenda of the chemical, pesticide and fossil fuel industries, while largely abandoning its mission of protecting the environment, the nation's irreplaceable natural resources and public health and safety.
"The Trump administration's rollbacks have hurt children, communities of color and lower-income Americans the most," said Cook. "That must be turned around, and Michael is the right person for the job."
If confirmed, Regan will replace Andrew Wheeler, a former top coal industry lobbyist and right-hand-man to Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oka.), a notorious climate change denier.
"Wheeler has spent his career working for the interests of enemies of public health," said Cook. "Michael has spent his career working to protect it. If he is confirmed, it will be a new day at the EPA: Americans can once again trust that the nation's top environmental official will embrace science and put the public good first."
The Environmental Working Group is a community 30 million strong, working to protect our environmental health by changing industry standards.
(202) 667-6982LATEST NEWS
A 'Terrifying Line Is Being Crossed,' Warns Minneapolis Mayor as More ICE Horror Stories Emerge
In an interview with the New York Times, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey described "marauding gangs of guys just walking down the street indiscriminately picking people up."
Jan 31, 2026
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is warning that the Trump administration has crossed a "terrifying line" with its use of federal immigration enforcement agents to brutalize and abduct people in his city.
In an interview with the New York Times published Saturday, Frey described operations that have taken place in his city as "marauding gangs of guys just walking down the street indiscriminately picking people up," likening it to a military "invasion."
During the interview, Frey was asked what he made of Attorney General Pam Bondi's recent offer to withdraw immigration enforcement forces from his city if Minnesota handed over its voter registration records to the federal government.
"That is wildly unconstitutional," Frey replied. "We should all be standing up and saying that’s not OK. Literally, listen to what they’re saying. Active threats like, Turn over the voter rolls or else, or we will continue to do what we’re doing. That’s something you can do in America now."
Frey was also asked about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's comments from earlier in the week where he likened the administration's invasion of Minneapolis to the first battle that took place during the US Civil War in Fort Sumter.
"I don’t think he’s saying that the Civil War is going to happen," said Frey. "I think what he’s saying is that a significant and terrifying line is being crossed. And I would agree with that."
As Frey issued warnings about the federal government's actions in Minneapolis, more horror stories have emerged involving US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minnesota.
The Associated Press reported on Saturday that staff at the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis have been raising red flags over ICE agents' claims about Alberto Castañeda Mondragón, a Mexican immigrant whom they treated after he suffered a shattered skull earlier this month.
ICE agents who brought Castañeda Mondragón to the hospital told staffers that he had injured himself after he "purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall" while trying to escape their custody.
Nurses who treated Castañeda Mondragón, however, said that there is no way that running headfirst into a wall could produce the sheer number of skull fractures he suffered, let alone the internal bleeding found throughout his brain.
“It was laughable, if there was something to laugh about," one nurse at the hospital told the Associated Press. “There was no way this person ran headfirst into a wall."
According to a Saturday report in the New York Times, concern over ICE's brutality has grown to such an extent that many Minnesota residents, including both documented immigrants and US citizens, have started wearing passports around their necks to avoid being potentially targeted.
Joua Tsu Thao, a 75-year-old US citizen who came to the country after aiding the American military during the Vietnam War, said the aggressive actions of immigration officers have left him with little choice but to display his passport whenever he walks outside his house.
"We need to be ready before they point a gun to us," Thao explained to the Times.
CNN on Friday reported that ICE has been rounding up refugees living in Minnesota who were allowed to enter the US after undergoing "a rigorous, years-long vetting process," and sending them to a facility in Texas where they are being prepared for deportation.
Lawyers representing the abducted refugees told CNN that their clients have been "forced to recount painful asylum claims with limited or no contact with family members or attorneys."
Some of the refugees taken to Texas have been released from custody. But instead of being flown back home, they were released in Texas "without money, identification, or phones," CNN reported.
Laurie Ball Cooper, vice president for US legal programs at the International Refugee Assistance Project, told CNN that government agents abducting refugees who had previously been allowed into the US is part of "a campaign of terror" that "is designed to scare people."
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"It’s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality," said one critic.
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Critics have weighed in on Amazon MGM Studios' documentary about first lady Melania Trump, and their verdicts are overwhelmingly negative.
According to review aggregation website Metacritic, Melania—which Amazon paid $40 million to acquire and $35 million to market—so far has received a collective score of just 6 out of 100 from critics, which indicates "overwhelming dislike."
Similarly, Melania scores a mere 6% on Rotten Tomatoes' "Tomameter," indicating that 94% of reviews for the movie so far have been negative.
One particularly brutal review came from Nick Hilton, film critic for the Independent, who said that the first lady came off in the film as "a preening, scowling void of pure nothingness" who leads a "vulgar, gilded lifestyle."
Hilton added that the film is so terrible that it fails even at being effective propaganda and is likely to be remembered as "a striking artifact... of a time when Americans willingly subordinated themselves to a political and economic oligopoly."
The Guardian's Xan Brooks delivered a similarly scathing assessment, declaring the film "dispiriting, deadly and unrevealing."
"It’s one of those rare, unicorn films that doesn’t have a single redeeming quality," Brooks elaborated. "I’m not even sure it qualifies as a documentary, exactly, so much as an elaborate piece of designer taxidermy, horribly overpriced and ice-cold to the touch and proffered like a medieval tribute to placate the greedy king on his throne."
Donald Clarke of the Irish Times also discussed the film's failure as a piece of propaganda, and he compared it unfavorably to the work of Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl.
"Melania... appears keener on inducing narcolepsy in its viewers than energizing them into massed marching," he wrote. "Triumph of the Dull, perhaps."
Variety's Owen Gleiberman argued that the Melania documentary is utterly devoid of anything approaching dramatic stakes, which results in the film suffering from "staggering inertia."
"Mostly it’s inert," Gleiberman wrote of the film. "It feels like it’s been stitched together out of the most innocuous outtakes from a reality show. There’s no drama to it. It should have been called 'Day of the Living Tradwife.'"
Frank Scheck of the Hollywood Reporter found that the movie mostly exposes Melania Trump is an empty vessel without a single original thought or insight, instead deploying "an endless number of inspirational phrases seemingly cribbed from self-help books."
Kevin Fallon of the Daily Beast described Melania as "an unbelievable abomination of filmmaking" that reaches "a level of insipid propaganda that almost resists review."
"It's so expected," Fallon added, "and utterly pointless."
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Leaked DHS Memo Reveals ICE Claiming Expansive New Warrantless Arrest Powers
"This memo bends over backwards to say that ICE agents have nothing but green lights to make an arrest without even a supervisor’s approval," said one former ICE official.
Jan 31, 2026
An internal legal memo obtained by the New York Times reveals that federal immigration enforcement agents are claiming broad new powers to carry out warrantless arrests.
The Times reported on Friday that the memo, which was signed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Todd Lyons, "expands the ability of lower-level ICE agents to carry out sweeps rounding up people they encounter and suspect are undocumented immigrants, rather than targeted enforcement operations in which they set out, warrant in hand, to arrest a specific person."
In the past, agents have been granted the power to carry out warrantless arrests only in situations where they believe a suspected undocumented immigrant is a "flight risk" who is unlikely to comply with obligations such as appearing at court hearings.
However, the memo declares this standard to be “unreasoned” and “incorrect,” saying that agents should feel free to carry out arrests so long as the suspect is "unlikely to be located at the scene of the encounter or another clearly identifiable location once an administrative warrant is obtained."
Scott Shuchart, former head of policy at ICE under President Joe Biden, told the Times that the memo appears to open the door to give the agency incredibly broad arrest powers.
"This memo bends over backwards," Shuchart said, "to say that ICE agents have nothing but green lights to make an arrest without even a supervisor’s approval."
Claire Trickler-McNulty, former senior adviser at ICE during the Biden administration, said the memo's language was so broad that "it would cover essentially anyone they want to arrest without a warrant, making the general premise of ever getting a warrant pointless."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, noted in a social media post that the memo appears to be a way for ICE to "get around an increasing number of court orders requiring [US Department of Homeland Security] to follow the plain words of the law which says administrative warrantless arrests are only for people 'likely to escape.'"
The memo broadens the terms, Reichlin-Melnick added, so that "anyone who refuses to wait for a warrant to be issued" is deemed "likely to escape."
Stanford University political scientist Tom Clark questioned the validity of the memo, which appears to directly conflict with the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which requires search warrants as a protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures."
"So, here’s how the law works," he wrote. "People on whom it imposes constraints don’t get to just write themselves a memo saying they don’t have to follow the law. Maybe I’ll write myself a memo saying that I don’t have to pay my taxes this year."
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