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This week’s big political news in South Carolina is an impending visit by sitting U.S. vice president – and presumed 2028 presidential frontrunner – JD Vance. The nation’s No. 2 is headed to Huger, S.C. to visit a steel plant – a move intended to shore up support for his boss Donald Trump‘s tariff policies (as well as his own future political ambitions).
While much of the Palmetto political universe is focused on Vance’s visit and its potential implications on the next “First in the South” presidential primary, his traveling companion is likely to generate headlines of his own… and plenty of statewide political fallout.
Vance will be joined on his South Carolina swing by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin, a former GOP gubernatorial nominee in New York who previously spent eight years in the U.S. House representing the Empire State’s first district (eastern Long Island).
Zeldin has been a one-man wrecking crew at the EPA, slashing billions of dollars in wasteful, reckless spending while targeting “activist groups that put ideological agendas ahead of directing action to actually remediate environmental issues impacting communities across the country.”
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Earlier this month, Zeldin penned a guest column in The New York Post assailing so-called “environmental justice” scams – i.e. efforts by the administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to route billions of dollars toward woke “ideological allies, instead of directing those resources into solving environmental problems and making meaningful change.”
“It is fundamentally disturbing how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been in our federal government,” he wrote. “So-called leaders and public servants placed their own agendas ahead of the needs of Americans.”
Since taking office, Zeldin has cancelled more than $22 billion in “environmental justice” and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) grants and contracts – seeking to “reprioritize EPA’s commitment to protecting human health and the environment.”
While Zeldin has blazed a trail of fiscally conservative governance in Washington, D.C., in South Carolina – ostensibly a “red” state with a “pro-Trump” governor – the would-be environmental czar is a career bureaucrat in the pocket of the eco-radical movement.
Not to mention the leader of the Palmetto State’s “environmental justice” movement…
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RELATED | SENATE PANEL ADVANCES ECO-RADICAL
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Status quo governor Henry McMaster‘s nomination of liberal bureaucrat Myra Reece to lead the newly created S.C. Department of Environmental Services (SCDES) is one of many head-scratching appointments the “Republican” executive has made recently.
It is also the latest evidence of the extent to which the Palmetto State – despite the protestations of its leaders – is not governed like a red state.
FITSNews has written extensively on Reece, urging state senators to reject her nomination to lead SCDES. Unfortunately, earlier this month only one member of the Senate’s agriculture committee – its chairman, Wes Climer – opposed Reece’s nomination.
According to a recent investigative report from Palmetto State Watch, Reece ran the office responsible for South Carolina’s environmental justice programs from 2016 through 2024. A past president of the left-leaning Environmental Council of States (ECOS), she remains a member of its board of directors. In fact, just this month the group issued a new organizational chart showing Reece was the co-chair of the organization’s “environmental justice workgroup.”
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Under Reece’s leadership, ECOS is pledged to “embedding environmental justice and equity considerations in day-to-day programmatic work,” according to its website.
Specifically, it advocates on behalf of “increasing access to environmental benefits and decreasing burdens in underserved communities”
What is Reece’s position on environmental justice in her capacity as interim SCDES director? We’d love to share that information with our audience, but here’s what you get when you visit the agency’s environmental justice webpage…
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That’s right… it’s been scrubbed.
In addition to her work with ECOS, Palmetto State Watch uncovered that Reece is a founding board member of Sustain SC – “a public-private partnership working closely with several state offices focused on advancing United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) in South Carolina.”
This group is committed to advancing left-leaning environmental, social, governance (ESG) protocols – another tool used by the far left to enforce corporate compliance with “environmental justice” and DEI mandates.
“(South Carolina’s) environmental justice policies –and embrace of ‘equity’ itself — deserve closer scrutiny as do the state employees who implemented them,” the Palmetto State Watch report concluded. “These involve ‘woke’ activities that can no longer be concealed from a public that is getting wise to the progressive influence being allowed to permeate South Carolina’s institutions. EPA Administrator Zeldin’s evaluation of environmental justice’s intentions and consequences shouldn’t be ignored by South Carolina’s leadership.”
The crazy thing? South Carolina’s leadership isn’t ignoring those intentions and consequences… it is embracing them. And this progressive influence underpinning these policies isn’t just “permeating” South Carolina’s institutions, it is defining them.
Starting at the top…
Standing in the breach against Reece’s appointment is Rom Reddy, founder of the new DOGE SC organization.
Reddy and his group have been aggressively calling out senators who advance woke bureaucrats like Reece and Edward Simmer, McMaster’s nominee to lead the S.C. Department of Public Health (SCDPH).
“I’m happy to see vice president Vance and the amazing EPA Director Lee Zeldin coming to South Carolina,” Reddy told FITSNews. “While they’re here, maybe they can talk to governor McMaster about his backing of uber WOKE leftist Myra Reece to head up South Carolina’s environmental department when he should be pushing someone like Lee Zeldin. It increasingly appears that the ever growing ranks of DOGE SC patriots are what will be left standing between freedom and tyranny.”
Indeed. It also increasingly appears as though South Carolina – for all its fluff and bluster about being a pro-Trump, pro-MAGA state – is quietly advancing the woke, progressive agenda via its unelected, unaccountable (yet ever-expanding) bureaucratic state.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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7 comments
If you get past all the “woke,” “left-leaning,” “DEI” labels in the article it is still hard to figure out your complaint about this lady. Can you tell us about some of her policies that are harmful to us?
This does not seem like a lot to ask. Like this sentence: “This group is committed to advancing left-leaning environmental, social, governance (ESG) protocols – another tool used by the far left to enforce corporate compliance with “environmental justice” and DEI mandates.”
Seems like low hanging fruit. What are the protocols you are referring to?
Thanks Will. Look forward to hearing more details about this so we can all be better informed.
I thought McTaxter already appointed Reece.
No! to Reece!!!!
Get rid of these RINO’s
This is concerning and difficult to understand the environmental consequences! With the unchecked, mushrooming development in sections of SC. that lack attention to issues of traffic, protection of estuaries and rivers, I am without clear direction. What’s the irreversible bottom line? Is this just shake and bake and hope for the best?
This is part of a larger problem with the Legislature….nobody (well, more like 90% of them) actually reads anything that requires more than two to five minutes or pages. They don’t look at anything policy-wise with real scrutiny. Woke neo-Marxists can fly under the radar in this state very easily, but still have a grasp on the levers of power and effect their commie leftist agenda. Reece is just one of probably three dozen powerful people in state government who pull this off.
This need to come out to everyone to tell Gov McMasters not to endorse Reece for the job
She has Awoke leftist agenda.