(The Center Square) – President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin is crisscrossing the country, meeting with policy leaders and everyday Americans to address issues of importance to constituents and promoting his “Powering the Great American Comeback” initiative.

“Under my leadership, EPA will no longer view the goals of protecting our environment and growing our economy as binary choices. We must and we will choose both,” Zeldin said of the EPA’s mission.

The EPA’s “Powering the Great American Comeback” initiative “will continue tirelessly in our work to ensure clean air, land, and water for every American, while simultaneously driving economic growth by unleashing energy dominance, pursuing permitting reform, making the U.S. the AI capital of the world, and bringing back American auto jobs,” he said.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are recommitting to common sense policies that preserve our environment and work for all Americans to unleash American energy, revitalize domestic manufacturing, cut costs for families and pursue permitting reform. The EPA will strive to accomplish all this while fulfilling our commitment to the rule of law, advancing cooperative federalism, and being great stewards of your hard-earned tax dollars,” he said.

To that end, Zeldin’s been traveling across the country meeting with Democrats and Republicans, including Democratic governors, state and federal lawmakers.

During his latest stop in Midland, Texas, he met with industry executives to discuss the agency’s reversal of Biden-era policies and regulations targeting the oil and natural gas industry, The Center Square reported. It was the first time an EPA administrator ever went there.

This was after a 36-hour swing through Salt Lake City, where Zeldin toured the Kennecott Copper Mine. It’s the world’s largest open-pit copper mine where the EPA is conducting a review of cleanup efforts. He also met with state and federal lawmakers to discuss air quality issues, including rescinding a previous administration guidance on international transport emissions. Zeldin is working with states and local air agencies “to develop the evidence necessary to grant regulatory relief,” he said.

“It is a priority for me to work directly with the regions and states, instead of leading from behind a desk in DC. It is essential to learn about the top environmental issues Americans face in communities across the nation and what we can do at EPA to more effectively carry out our mission,” he said.

Prior to that, Zeldin traveled to Denver to visit the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Superfund Site, met with Democratic Gov. Jared Polis and state and federal officials to advance the agency’s commitment to “cooperative federalism,” discuss air quality and energy issues critical to Colorado.

Zeldin is traveling to Superfund sites and disaster recovery areas as part of his Powering American Comeback Initiative.

In Missouri, he visited the West Lake Superfund and Coldwater Creek sites and participated in events hosted by U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley. Hawley had asked Zeldin to expedite cleanup of the West Lake Landfill that’s been a Superfund site since 1970. Prior to being confirmed EPA administrator, Zeldin promised Hawley he would visit the site to determine the extent of radioactive waste contamination that caused high cancer rates in the area. Zeldin met with residents who described their illnesses attributed to the site as well as with farmers who expressed concerns about fuel costs, food security and water.

In Arizona, he met with Democrats Gov. Katie Hobbs and U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, members of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and the Ak-Chin Tribe to discuss efforts to improve air quality, reduce pollution, implement policy reforms and spur economic growth.

A major focus of Zeldin’s is working with states and tribes to “resolve the massive backlog of State Implementation Plans (SIPs) and Tribal Implementation Plans (TIPs) that the Biden-Harris Administration refused to resolve.”

Because the Biden administration focused on “ideological pursuits instead of the agency’s core mission and statutory duties,” Zeldin argues, there were extensive delays in air quality improvement. “With more than 140 million Americans living in nonattainment areas around the country, cooperative federalism and clearing out the State Implementation Plan backlog will make significant strides to improving the air we breathe,” he said.

“The EPA will work with, not against, states and assist them to ensure that air quality is protected while growing the economy – including development and expansion of semiconductor manufacturing and artificial intelligence,” he said.

Zeldin also traveled to Hawaii where he met with officials and community leaders to survey recovery efforts after the 2023 Maui wildfires, visited the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, and met with the Hawaii Department of Health to discuss collaborative efforts to provide clear air, land and water.

This isn’t a reflection on the nation’s oldest and most renowned institution of higher learning. Remedial courses aren’t new. Plenty of colleges and universities offer courses geared toward helping students with precalculus and calculus. 

The fact that students at a highly competitive school like Harvard may need help getting caught up in a core subject should be a bright red warning light that our K-12 system is falling behind when it comes to math education.  

Looking at the most recent scores from the Nation’s Report Card, we know there has been minimal progress for students catching up from COVID learning loss, and most fourth and eighth graders on last year’s exam still performed below pre-pandemic levels, with a widening gap between disadvantaged students and their more resourced peers.  

To ensure future generations are prepared for postsecondary success, we need to look for upstream solutions—state-level math policy that we know will help students build the foundation they need.  

State leaders can act now on five essential math policies designed to transform math achievement. 

Next, we know that math coaches are an essential investment for all elementary and secondary schools and can be relied upon to lead professional development, facilitate lesson planning, teach model lessons and observe and provide immediate feedback. States like Alabama and Kentucky have implemented strong math coach programs.  

Just as we look to NAEP as a national assessment tool, teachers should be implementing regular assessments in their classrooms that provide valuable student progress information and inform future instruction tactics. When assessments are followed by timely interventions to get students back on track, student learning outcomes can dramatically improve. 

Lindsey Henderson serves as the Math Policy Director at ExcelinEd.

(The Center Square) – Victor Schwartz has been importing wine for nearly four decades, little of which prepared him to deal with President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs.

The founder of New York-based wine and spirit importers VOS Selections is trying to run a business that imports from 16 countries as tariffs seemingly change on a whim. But that’s just one challenge in the heavily regulated alcohol industry. Schwartz has set prices with the state of New York. So, during Trump’s halting and constantly changing tariff rollouts at the beginning of April, Schwartz was setting prices for May, another challenge given the likelihood of changing prices.

Schwartz and his team of 19 employees reviewed hundreds of products by SKU, or stock-keeping unit codes, to try to determine how tariffs would affect their inventory. 

“We had to strategize with a very cloudy crystal ball in terms of what our pricing was going to be, how much of an impact was going to happen and how much could a particular product afford in terms of a price increase,” he told The Center Square. 

In the end, some of it came down to where the company was going to take a loss. 

“You had to make decisions on where you were going to eat it,” Shwartz said.

Schwartz was so frustrated that he and other business owners filed a lawsuit against Trump and his administration over the tariffs.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a similar lawsuit alleging that Trump doesn’t have the power he thinks he has to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Liberty Justice Center, the Texas nonprofit that filed suit on behalf of VOS Selections and four other businesses, on Friday asked a judge for a temporary restraining order to stop tariffs from going into effect while the court determines how to proceed. 

The group’s 68-page request asks for a temporary restraining order to prevent the implementation of the April 2 tariffs Trump announced. 

“The power claimed by the President here is extreme: he claims the power to unilaterally impose infinite tariffs of his choosing on any country he chooses – even countries with which we run a trade surplus,” the TRO request notes. “Any grant of such authority by Congress to the President should qualify as a major question subject to the strictest judicial scrutiny – which this claim of authority under IEEPA cannot survive.”

California’s lawsuit noted the word “tariffs” doesn’t appear in the 1977 law and that no previous president – except Trump briefly during his first term – has used the IEEPA to impose tariffs. Both the California suit and the LJC suit claim Congress, not the president, has the power to impose tariffs.

The LJC suit says IEEPA was passed to curb presidential power. 

“The statute was passed in 1977, in the wake of various presidential scandals that motivated Congress to attempt to cabin the president’s emergency powers – the entire point was to take away power the President had previously asserted, and abused, under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917,” the legal filing notes.

It further states: “If Congress had wanted to include broad tariff powers as part of IEEPA’s grant of emergency authority, it could have said as much.”

Trump has made bold promises about his tariffs on the campaign trail and since inauguration. He has said tariffs will make the U.S. “rich as hell,” bring back manufacturing jobs lost to lower-wage countries in decades past, and shift the tax burden away from U.S. families.

A tariff is a tax on imported goods. The importer pays the tax and can either absorb the loss or pass the tax on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

In his “Liberation Day” speech, Trump said foreign nations for decades have stolen American jobs, factories and industries. He said the tariffs would bring in new jobs, factories and industries and return the U.S. to a manufacturing superpower.

“Our country and its taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years,” Trump said. “But it is not going to happen anymore.”

Some nations, including China, have responded with retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods. Others have signaled they are eager to make a deal with the Trump administration. Trump has not yet announced any trade deals. Trump paused the higher tariffs for 90 days, giving his administration limited time to make deals with 75 nations the White House said reached out seeking trade negotiations.