Honors and record
The recognition he has received, and the work that earned it — decades of litigation, three national movements, and fourteen books.
Achievements
From industrial polluters to federal agencies, his career has been built on the same act: putting institutions under oath, forcing their own documents into the public record, and saying plainly what those documents show.
He founded and chaired Children's Health Defense, turning a citizen-litigation playbook on the questions parents were told not to ask: what children are exposed to, what regulators know, and who pays when a family is harmed.
Senior attorney work with the Natural Resources Defense Council, landmark suits over water and air, and thousands of pro bono hours for working families, fishermen, and farmers living downstream of industry.
He helped bring the Hudson back from an industrial sewer, then built the local patrol model into a worldwide alliance of hundreds of Waterkeeper groups.
Fourteen books and countless essays and speeches arguing that a captured government cannot protect the people it governs — several of them national bestsellers written against enormous institutional pushback.
In 2025 he took office as the 26th U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, carrying the fight over chronic disease, food policy, and agency accountability inside the federal government.
Honors & recognition
Named for the Hudson River litigation that turned Riverkeeper into the model for waterway defense worldwide.
For work joining environmental protection to a moral and spiritual tradition.
For founding the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic and putting law students in court against polluters.
Recognizing two decades of clean-water enforcement.
Honoring a career of citizen-suit litigation under the Clean Water Act.
Twenty-one years leading the world's largest clean-water advocacy network: 344 licensed programs in 44 countries.
Multiple bestsellers, including Crimes Against Nature, American Values, and The Real Anthony Fauci.
Confirmed by the United States Senate 52–48 on February 13, 2025, and sworn in the same day.