The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Michael Regan as the nations 16th Environmental Protection Agency administrator, tasking the former North Carolina regulator with rebuilding a rule-making body that saw scientists and staffers leave by the hundreds under the Trump administration .

Regan, 44, the first Black man to run the agency in its 50-year history, was confirmed with support from every Democrat and 16 Republicans, ultimately securing his job with a 66-to-34 vote.

He takes the reins at a historic turning point, where class and race are increasingly understood as corollaries to how much disease-causing pollution Americans face throughout their lives.

Environmental justice is something that is near and dear to my heart, Regan said at his Senate confirmation hearing in February.

Regan, an expert in air pollution, will face the dual challenge of creating new rules to curb how many tiny particles which new research shows kill children and threaten brain health make it into the air, but also roll back measures the Trump administration put in place to impede future regulators from considering that science.

He will also play a key role in shaping domestic climate policy, and will likely pursue new rules limiting pollution from automobiles and power plants as two of his first major regulatory pushes.

Hell be helped in that role by a powerful predecessor, Gina McCarthy, the former Obama-era EPA chief now serving as President Joe Biden s climate czar.

The new administrations government-wide approach to the emissions crisis will likely elevate the EPA administrator. Yet, in what may be a sign of the partisan tone of criticism to come, Regan has already had to fend off attacks from Republicans questioning how much power hell have compared to McCarthy, a claim that right-wing trolls first lobbed to dismiss the nominee as a diversity hire.

Where the decisions are in EPAs purview, I can assure you that I will be leading and making those decisions, and I will be accepting the accountability for those decisions, Regan said at the February hearing when GOP senators echoed the right-wing talking point.