Air Date: Week of March 14, 2025

Christine Todd Whitman is the former Governor of New Jersey and former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. (Photo: Emily Fletke)

The Trump administration has announced plans to roll back multiple environmental regulations, cut EPA spending and push back environmental justice programs. Christine Todd Whitman served as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush and she’s the only woman who has served as the governor of New Jersey. She joined Living on Earth’s host Steve Curwood and Paloma Beltran to discuss recent federal actions end her centrist approach on environmental regulation.

Transcript

CURWOOD: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood.

BELTRAN: And I’m Paloma Beltran.

The Trump Administration has hit the Environmental Protection Agency with major changes. Many workers have been fired, some rehired, and amid the confusion billions of dollars face claw backs. And the new EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, has promised to slash regulations to shreds.

CURWOOD: Also, President Trump has taken the US out of the Paris Climate agreement. And the scale of the efforts to cut EPA spending and rollback rules is unprecedented.

BELTRAN: Christine Todd Whitman was the first woman governor of New Jersey and led the EPA as a Republican with a comparatively modest conservative agenda under President George W. Bush. Now she’s co-founder of Forward, a new political party to appeal to centrists who feel left out by both Republicans and Democrats.

CURWOOD: Governor Whitman joined us earlier and I started by asking how she feels about the country’s direction now when it comes to climate and the environment.

WHITMAN: I think we're going totally the wrong direction. There's no question in my mind, the charge of the Environmental Agency is to protect human health and the environment, and that's what it does. It's the one that does the research to see what is acceptable for human consumption on some of these chemicals and things. It is the one that's there when there's a disaster and helps clean up. I mean, in the Maui fires in Hawaii that destroyed an entire community, it was EPA that went there and helped with the cleanup. Helped identify where there were hot spots, where there were problems, worked to lay out a map of the totally destroyed buildings. Worked to ensure the constant monitoring air quality, so that people would know what they were getting into when they went back to their homes and helped ensure the cleanup of a whole lot of batteries that were stored there, lithium batteries. I mean, EPA, that's the kind of thing it does when it responds to a crisis. And we're the ones that respond to crises everywhere. And then it's also the one that's out front saying you've got to be careful about this, that, or the other. It's monitoring the quality of water, monitoring the air quality. And Mother Nature, as I think we're learning, doesn't care at anything about geopolitical bounds. And so when I was governor of New Jersey, I could have closed down every manufacturing plant in the state and still had problems with the air quality standard because of air transport from the coal mining in Kentucky and West Virginia. We've seen this with storms, with water runoff, things like that. It doesn't stay in one place. It affects everybody, and that's why you have to have some national standards. It can't just be state to state. States can go beyond what EPA says is safe. They can make it stricter, that's fine, but they can't go below what the agency says. And the agency has incredible scientists and a depth of knowledge that no individual state really has.

BELTRAN: And what do you make of what we've done as a country in the 20 plus years since you've left your role as EPA Administrator?

WHITMAN: Well, we've had forwards and backwards. I mean, we did pretty well under the last Democratic administration, under Biden's administration, but previous to that, the Trump administration had already started cutting and starving the agency for money. And unfortunately, many of those with the real depth of knowledge, the institutional knowledge that you need, because these things are complicated, left. There's still quite a few of them there now, but I think they're leaving because it's clear this administration does not want an Environmental Protection Agency. I mean, we, as a country, I have to say we're the only industrialized country in the world that does not have environment as a recognized cabinet position. EPA is only an agency. We were treated as a cabinet level, and I attended all the cabinet meetings, that went without saying, but we could never make that extra step. You could never get a clean bill through that would say it's a cabinet position. So we've always been a little bit hesitant about regulations, and it's easy to hate the agency because it's a regulatory agency, so it's either telling people to do something they don't want to do and spend extra money, or telling them to stop doing something that was beneficial to them. So it's easy to hate the agency, but you have to trust that they're doing what's in the best interests of the greatest number of people to keep us safe and healthy.

BELTRAN: So let's just say for a moment that you were President of the United States and could set the policy for the EPA. What direction do you think we should be heading in? What major environmental issues in the US do you think the EPA ought to be addressing right now?

WHITMAN: Well, I mean, if we haven't figured out that Mother Nature is a little mad at us right now and is kind of sending the message that you guys may think you're smart and capable, but I'm in charge, then we really are deaf and dumb to this. We have to take climate change seriously. It's costing us lives. It's costing us livelihoods, businesses, billions of dollars, and destabilizing a number of countries around the world. It's not good for us when these countries are destabilized like that, when you start to have violence, because people are frustrated and angry, and so we need to take this issue seriously. I have said for a long time that if you want to get it down to one particular issue, that quantity and quality of water is the number one environmental issue, but that's all tied up in climate change as well.

BELTRAN: And you are the co-ounder of the Forward Party, a centrist third party that aims to look forward from this time of partisan polarization. To what extent do you see this party as a possible option for conservatives who don't feel their beliefs align with that of the Make America Great Again crowd?

WHITMAN: Well, it's a home for them. It's a home for people on both sides, from both parties, who feel that they've been displaced, that their parties have left them. The far left on the Democrats and the far right on the Republicans, because we're building from the ground up. We're serious about a third party. It's not like the third parties that we have seen traditionally, which run just presidential candidates and there's no infrastructure below. So the minute the election is over, that's it. They're gone. Or parties like the Liberal Party or the Green Party, which are about just a certain subset of issues. We're about putting people in office who will represent their constituents. We don't have a platform that says you have to be pro-gun or anti-gun, or pro-abortion or anti-abortion. You have to sign a pledge that says you'll uphold the rule of law, respect the Constitution, work with anyone to solve problems, create a safe space to discuss the controversial issues, and open the process so that anyone who is legally able to vote, can vote. And then we have principles of respect for one another, for protecting our democracy, for economic opportunity. And then we want our candidates to decide what are the issues that are most important to my constituents? What matters here? I mean, what's important in Arizona is not the same as what's important in New Jersey. They're very different, and we should recognize that. But unfortunately, the two major parties don't do that. They have a very strict set of policies, and you have to adhere to those. And if you don't vote the way they want you to vote, then they'll come after you in a primary, they'll stop funding you, they'll take away committee assignments. We hear every day how many people there are in Washington who really don't like everything that's going on, but are afraid to do anything about it, because they're afraid of the repercussions. That's not how we should be operating. And so what we're saying to those people is, look, join us. We'll get you volunteers, we'll help you with issue research, we'll help you with getting money, and we'll have your back.

CURWOOD: Governor, how healthy is our democracy? The man in the White House at one point campaigned saying that you'll never have to vote again. Some people say that it's time to vote while we still can. How do you feel about the present state of the way the law and the Constitution is being viewed by the people who seem to be in power right now?

WHITMAN: Our democracy is teetering on a knife's edge. We held in the last go round of the Trump administration because he had people there who were sensible and who were able to stop some of the most extreme things that he wanted to do. Now he's filled the administration with syncophants, and they're not going to oppose him. They've learned that the best way to motivate Donald Trump is to praise him and to do it publicly. But you know, Steve, the thing that bothers me the most is absolute by the book dictator approach, which is you start driving wedges between people. You start making people afraid of others who don't look like them or don't act like them. When you look at what's happening with Columbia University in New York, they're going after Palestinian protesters. I don't like what those protesters are saying, but we have something called freedom of speech here, and unless they're inciting a riot, which is clearly illegal, they can say what they want to say. We don't have to like it, but now all of a sudden, you're not supporting Jews enough. I've been a big supporter of Israel and been there several times, but that's not right. And what it is is, again, it's speaking to that hate. It's saying all immigrants are rapists or drug addicts and we're in danger from them. It's creating a world that is just so counter to what the United States has always stood for. That I, I don't hate Donald Trump, but I really deeply deplore what he's doing to our country. And undermining the rule of law. He doesn't seem to care about it, Constitution is an inconvenient document. He's just going to go right ahead and do what he's doing, and if he starts to ignore the courts, really ignore them, and he already is, in a way. He's pushed off a lot of decisions that have gone against him, and hasn't paid penalties, but he's never paid bills, so that's not unusual, but he's really undermining the public's confidence in the courts and in the rule of law. Then we're in a really dangerous spot. I don't know what we do then.

CURWOOD: In other words, vote while we still can.

WHITMAN: Yeah, I would advise it. I mean, listen, democracy doesn't ask a whole lot of us, but it does ask us to be engaged and at least vote, and we just haven't been doing a good job of that.

BELTRAN: And what have you heard from various voters? You know, how do they feel about the trajectory that this country is on?

WHITMAN: On an everyday basis, right, look, people are just concerned about keeping a roof over their heads, being able to feed their family, being able to be treated with dignity and have the opportunity to move forward and succeed. And for too long, they feel that Congress and politicians have not listened to them, and that's how Donald Trump got into office because he played to them. He said, I hear you. He's the wrong person for them, because he may have heard them, but he doesn't really care about the person who's struggling. And if you look at his tax policies, they're all to benefit the rich. They don't benefit the average wage earner. And right now he's saying, well, we might have a recession, not a big deal. Maybe not a big deal if you have billions in the bank, but it's a big deal to someone who is living right on the edge and paycheck to paycheck. So I think we're going to have some buyer's remorse coming. But in general, after this election, our internet traffic at the Forward Party went up over 120% and our state organizations were seeing the same thing. People who coming to them saying, what can I do? Can I run? How do I do this? How do we stop what's going on? And you're seeing more and more people leave the two major parties, the Republican and Democratic Party, and become independent, independently registered. And those are the people that we want to work with. They've got to start to get engaged and help us build a party that can push back against what's going on.

CURWOOD: So Governor, your name is Christine Todd Whitman. This is Women's History Month that we're talking to you in, and you did become the first female governor of New Jersey. What did little Christine Todd learn as a young person that opened the door for you to become governor, to run the EPA, to be starting a middle way political party?

WHITMAN: Well, I'm the youngest of eight, and so I was the one that was there at the dining room table when my parents were talking about what was going on in the world. And they were very involved politically in the Republican Party. Never ran for office, but they were very involved. And I grew up listening to all of that, what was happening in the world and the state and our local government. I knew I wanted to be involved in policy. I'd started going door to door when I was 13. Stuffing, stamping, sealing, and sending, which is what we did in the old days, of getting campaign materials out. And particularly, I was doing a door to door, I'll never forget it. And I knocked on the door to ask this person about voting, and she said, it's my, it's my right not to vote. And I remember thinking, yeah, it is. But if everybody took that attitude, where would we be?

CURWOOD: And there are, of course, barriers for women back then and still in this society. How did you overcome those?

WHITMAN: Well, you know what? I never thought about them much, Steve, because I figured that was going to be somebody else's problem. I couldn't do anything about it. I was what I was. I was a female. And if they were going to have an issue with that, they were going to have an issue with it. So you don't feed the beast. So when I was running for governor, when they said I was a Tom Kean in pearls, referring to the previous Republican governor, I just didn't wear pearls anymore. If they said my husband was giving me all the ideas on the tax plan after I got into office, John just never came down to Trenton, so they didn't see him around. You just don't make it easy for people to reaffirm their prejudices. And so that's about the only way I handled it. Except the only thing I will say is I did make oh, it'd be terrible now, it'd be DEI. I mean, I know, I know, the awful thing. But I did make an effort to make the administration look more like the state. And first of all, I got into trouble with Republicans because I didn't fire every Democrat when I got into office. Because I said, look, if they're doing a good job, why would I fire them? Why should we lose somebody who had the institutional knowledge and doing an important job? But when there was an opening, and I'd ask my personnel people to, you know, give me some names to fill a slot, almost inevitably, the first draft was all white male, and I'd say to them, nope, I want diversity here. Give me some diversity. And they would, and they'd come back with enormously qualified candidates. And sometimes I would pick somebody from the first list. I mean, I wasn't saying I'm not going to hire white men, but often I could find immensely competent men and women, people of color and women and it, I think it made a difference in people's ideas and thoughts about what they could do.

BELTRAN: Governor Christine Todd Whitman is a former administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Thank you for joining us.

WHITMAN: Paloma, it's been a pleasure to be with you.

CURWOOD: And a pleasure for us to have you, Governor Whitman.

WHITMAN: Good to have talked to you. Steve.

 

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