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.”…
EPA Pick Pruitt Attacked for believing ‘debate should be encouraged about truth of climate science’
…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.