Scott Pruitt, longtime adversary of EPA, confirmed to lead the agency under Trump admin.

Scott Pruitt, who as Oklahoma’s attorney general spent years suing the Environmental Protection Agency over its efforts to regulate various forms of pollution, was confirmed Friday as the agency’s next administrator.

Pruitt cleared the Senate by a vote of 52-46, winning support from two Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. Only one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, voted against him, saying he had “fundamentally different” views than she about the EPA’s role.

The vote came after Democrats held the Senate floor for hours overnight and through the morning to criticize Pruitt as a pawn of the fossil-fuel industry and to push for a last-minute delay of his confirmation. Part of their argument was an Oklahoma judge’s ruling late Thursday that Pruitt’s office must turn over thousands of emails related to his communication with oil, gas and coal companies. The judge set a Tuesday deadline for the release of the emails, which a nonprofit group had been seeking for more than two years.…

Report: Trump to sign executive orders related to EPA’s climate work once Pruitt is confirmed

Inside EPA reports that President Trump plans to sign executive orders involving climate change at an EPA swearing-in ceremony set to take place once his nominee to head the agency, Scott Pruitt, is confirmed. From the Hill:

At that event, an administration source told Inside EPA that Trump will sign executive orders related to the agency’s climate work and that they could “suck the air out of the room,” according to the report.

The official did not say how many orders Trump will sign or what they will address. But the planned event could be similar to one Trump held at the Pentagon after Defense Secretary James Mattis was sworn in.

Inside EPA is a subscription site but the opening paragraph of the story states Trump will, “visit EPA headquarters to sign executive orders (EOs) aimed at scaling back the agency’s climate change and other work.” It’s not clear what “scaling back” means.

This leak to Inside EPA might be aimed at creating trouble for Scott Pruitt, who has yet to be confirmed. Recall that the EPA has been reported, at least twice, to be full of weepy bureaucrats unable to deal with Trump’s election victory. Earlier this month Politico reported that some of the bureaucrats had organized an encrypted communication network aimed at getting the word out about any EPA-related moves by Trump. The plan involved laundering the leaks through former Obama appointees with one EPA employee telling Politico, “It’s probably much safer to have those folks act as the conduit and to act as the gathering point rather than somebody in the agency.”…

Jeb Bush: Scott Pruitt is ready to turn around the EPA

(CNN)When Scott Pruitt and I assembled a Restoring Federalism Task Force last year, he headlined the plan: “Putting Washington In Its Place.” Those five words sum up exactly what the American people were clamoring for in this election: a dramatic shift of power out of a broken Washington and back into the hands of the people.

Jeb Bush
I cannot think of a person more suited to lead the Environmental Protection Agency than Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, someone who understands how to rein in an out-of-control bureaucracy and ensure that Washington focuses solely on its core functions.
Pruitt and I share a common vision for empowering the states and limiting the intrusion of the federal government in every area of our lives. He understands that a government closest to the people is best able to serve their interests.
Our country has been held back over the past eight years because the appropriate balance between federal and state powers has become totally skewed. Individual liberty and our constitutional order have been threatened. People’s aspirations have been capped by a federal government that overextended its reach, and in no place has this been more apparent than at the EPA. The EPA has become a one-agency job killer, putting working people out of a job and increasing costs for everyone.
The far left has tried to distort Pruitt’s views in a lame attempt to make him into an anti-science boogeyman. The Scott Pruitt I know is far from it. Unlike liberals who want to shut down any rational debate about climate change, Pruitt has acknowledged human impact on the climate and supports a robust discussion about its effects and what the government should and shouldn’t do to address it.
In a 2013 speech, Pruitt demonstrated that he understood the proper role of the EPA, completely repudiating Democrats’ ludicrous claims about how he would lead the agency:
“May I say this to you and please hear my heart on this. … It’s not good for us to say that the EPA doesn’t have any role. Because just think about it, you have a power plant in Arkansas that’s burning coal irresponsibly or inconsistent with the statue, and it comes over to Oklahoma and Texas. So there is a role for the EPA, it’s just that they assert themselves in ways that are above that role.”
At the EPA, Pruitt will balance the