Scott
Pruitt
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Environment; Andrew Wheeler; Clean Water Act; Clean
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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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