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Also see: Environment; Andrew Wheeler; Clean Water Act; Clean Power Plan;
Undated: Edward Scott Pruitt (born May 9, 1968) is an American lawyer and Republican politician from the state of Oklahoma. He served as the fourteenth Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from February 17, 2017 to July 6, 2018. He was nominated for the EPA position by President Donald Trump and was confirmed by the United States Senate to lead the EPA in a 52–46 vote.
Pruitt represented Tulsa and Wagoner Counties in the Oklahoma Senate from 1998 until 2006. In 2010, Pruitt was elected Attorney General of Oklahoma. In that role, he was pro-life, opposed same-sex marriage, the Affordable Care Act, and environmental regulations as a self-described "leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda."[2] In his campaigns for Oklahoma Attorney General, Pruitt received major corporate and employee campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, taking in at least $215,574 between 2010 and 2014 even though he ran unopposed in the latter year. As Oklahoma's Attorney General, Pruitt sued the Environmental Protection Agency at least 14 times regarding the agency's actions. In 2012, Pruitt was elected as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association and re-elected for a second term in February 2013.
Pruitt rejects the scientific consensus that human-caused carbon dioxide emissions are a primary contributor to climate change.[3]
By July 2018, Pruitt was under at least 14 separate federal investigations by the Government Accountability Office, the EPA inspector general, the White House Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, and two House committees over his spending habits, conflicts of interests, extreme secrecy, and management practices. Pruitt made frequent use of first-class travel as well as frequent charter and military flights. As EPA administrator, Pruitt leased a condo in Washington D.C. at a deeply discounted rate from a lobbyist whose clients were regulated by the EPA. Pruitt further caused ethics concerns by circumventing the White House and using a narrow provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act to autonomously give raises to his two closest aides of approximately $28,000 and $57,000 each, which were substantially higher than salaries paid to those in similar positions in the Obama administration, and which allowed both to avoid signing conflicts of interest pledges. By June 2018, amid a steady succession of revelations of misconduct, a growing chorus of conservatives had begun suggesting that Pruitt should resign. On July 5, 2018, Pruitt announced he would resign from office on July 6, leaving Andrew R. Wheeler as the acting head of the agency.[4][5][6]
Pruitt was an advisor to the Jeb Bush presidential campaign, 2016. In February 2016, he said that Donald Trump would be "more abusive to the Constitution than Barack Obama".[9]
According to a 2018 Harvard University analysis, the Trump administration's rollbacks and proposed reversals of environmental rules under Pruitt would under the most conservative estimate likely "cost the lives of over 80 000 US residents per decade and lead to respiratory problems for many more than 1 million people."[82]
According to Politico, "Pruitt has yet to create new regulations that would outlast his tenure or Trump's, or to rescind any of the regulations Obama created. He's only been able to delay a few that were already on hold before he took office because they were mired in litigation."[83] The New York Times and The Washington Post noted that while Pruitt was prolific in undoing government regulations, legal experts said that Pruitt did so hastily and through poorly crafted legal arguments that lacked legal, scientific and technical data.[84][85] As a result, legal experts considered it likely that some of the rollbacks may be reversed in the courts.[84] Legal experts described the legal arguments made by Pruitt's EPA as unprecedented and a departure from previous Republican and Democratic administrations.[84] Rutgers University professor Stuart Shapiro said that while Pruitt had weakened enforcement of existing regulations, he had not been successful at repealing regulations.[86] By April 2018, six of Pruitt's rollbacks had been struck down by courts, and Pruitt had withdrawn two of his proposed rollbacks.[84] Pruitt's legal document outlining the rationale to roll back a regulation on greenhouse emissions from vehicle tailpipes was 38 pages long, lacked the kind of data that courts expect in cases involving environmental regulations, and was mostly direct quotes from public comments made by automaker lobbyists.[84] In contrast, the Obama administration's rationale for implementing the regulation in the first place was 1,217 pages long.[84]
The President's first budget instructs Pruitt to cut the agency's budget by 24% and reduce its 15,000 employees by 20%.[92] Pruitt has sought to end EPA funding for the United States Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division, which relies on $20 million a year from the EPA for 27% of its budget.[96] Pruitt has issued a directive to stop litigants from pressuring the EPA to regulate, referring to the practice as "sue and settle".[97] In response, 57 former EPA counsels signed a letter criticizing Pruitt's directive.[98] Pruitt has offered himself as a replacement of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions.[99]
On April 28, 2017, Pruitt fired scientists from the agency's 18-member Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC), indicating he intended to replace them with industry representatives.[100] Ryan Jackson, Pruitt's chief of staff, asked the BOSC's chair to change testimony she had submitted before a May 23 hearing of the House Science Committee, causing her to complain she felt "bullied."[101][102][103]
In October 2017, Pruitt removed several scientists from EPA advisory panels and forbade any scientist who receives a grant from the EPA from then serving those panels.[104] By December 2017, 700 staff had left EPA during Pruitt's tenure, including over 200 scientists. During that time, Pruitt hired 129 people, including 7 scientists.[105] In March 2018, Pruitt proposed to restrict the EPA from considering research that relies on confidential information, such as medical data. The proposal was modeled on a stalled Congressional bill.[106][107] It was expected that by August 2017, 47 of 58 serving scientists would have been removed from their positions, though they typically serve three year terms and which are renewed after they first expire.[108]
On June 29, 2017, Pruitt attended a board meeting of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, and told them that he will have researchers publicly debate the human role in climate change, adopting Steven E. Koonin's suggestion to hold a "red team blue team" exercise.[109] In December 2017, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly rejected the debate idea.[110] Pruitt has met with industry representatives almost daily while rarely meeting with environmentalists.[111]
In March 2018, Time magazine reviewed the status of the EPA's website after a year of Pruitt's tenure. The magazine reported that the website's Climate Change section was taken down in April 2017 after existing in various forms for more than twenty years. The message, "This page is being updated", was left in its place. In addition, searching for "climate change" produced 5,000 results compared to the previous 12,000. Resources on how local communities could combat climate change were cut from 380 to 170 pages, and a 50-page resource on "a Student's Guide to Global Climate Change" was not archived. On some pages, edits have been made to remove terms like "climate change", "air pollutant", "greenhouse gas", while "carbon footprint" and "carbon accounting" were replaced with "environmental footprint" and "sustainability accounting".[117]
An EPA official said that Pruitt and his top aides kept "secret" schedules and calendars to hide controversial meetings with industry representatives, and destroyed or altered records which might reflect poorly on Pruitt.[125] A review by CNN of internal EPA emails and the official EPA calendar found that there were discrepancies in Pruitt's official EPA calendar, as more than two dozen meetings and calls were omitted.[125] Legal experts said that the practices of keeping a secret calendar and destroying or altering records with the intent to deceive the public could be considered a violation of federal law.[125]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Pruitt
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