Trump to tap longtime coal lobbyist for EPA’s No. 2 spot – “Trump is once again catering to his polluter allies and prioritizing their profits over our kids’ health”

By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis 21 July 2017 (The Washington Post) – President Trump will nominate a prominent coal lobbyist and former Senate aide, Andrew Wheeler, to serve as the Environmental Protection Agency’s deputy administrator, according to two senior administration officials. Wheeler, a principal at Faegre Baker Daniels Consulting, is a lobbyist for coal […]

Trump nominates climate-denying conservative talk radio host as USDA’s top scientist

By Natasha GeilingFollow 20 July 2017 (ThinkProgress) — Sam Clovis, a former Trump campaign adviser and one-time conservative talk radio host, has no background in the hard sciences, nor any policy experience with food or agriculture. Still, that did not stop President Donald Trump from officially nominating Clovis to the position of the United States […]

Trump EPA chief wants to enlist a “Red Team” to sow doubts about climate science

By Josh Voorhees 30 June 2017 (Slate) –  Scott Pruitt is hatching a new plan to turn his personal and unreasonable denial of the accepted science on climate change into official federal policy: He’ll employ military tactics to review climate science to assess the “truth.” Or, as a new report in E&E News’ ClimateWire put […]

Appeals court rules against EPA in methane gas regulations – “This ruling slams the brakes on the Trump administration’s brazen efforts to put the interests of corporate polluters ahead of protecting the public and the environment”

3 July 2017 (VOA News) – A U.S. federal appeals court ruled Monday that Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt lacks the authority to suspend rules that oil and gas companies monitor and fix methane gas leaks. Two of the three judges on the panel wrote that an order delaying such a rule is the […]

EPA axes 38 more science advisers, cancels panel meetings – “This says to me that they do not want objective science”

By Sean Reilly 20 June 2017 (E&E News) – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt continues to clean house at a key advisory committee, signaling plans to drop several dozen current members of the Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC), according to an email yesterday from a senior agency official.All board members whose three-year […]

Video: EPA launching program to challenge climate science

2 July 2017 (PBS) – In the latest move to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change, Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has recruited a team of researchers to challenge climate science. Emily Holden, who broke the story for E&E News’s ClimateWire, joins Hari Sreenivasan from Washington, D.C. EPA launching program to […]

The Trump response to the kids’ climate lawsuit isn’t denial. It’s evasion.

By Karina Brown 15 June 2017 (Slate) – America is out of the Paris Agreement, and although that might be the best option for the future of the Earth, all things considered, it still is a terrible indicator of our prospects for fighting climate change. Currently, cities and states are individually signing back onto the […]

EPA head defends White House’s plan for massive cuts to his agency

By Brady Dennis 15 June 2017 (The Washington Post) – President Trump once vowed to get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency “in almost every form,” leaving behind only “tidbits.” On Thursday, the man he appointed to lead the EPA went to Capitol Hill to defend a budget proposal that would begin that promised dismantling.“I […]

Trump is handing the U.S. government over to fossil fuel interests – The appointments, the policies, the rhetoric — it is not subtle

By David Roberts 14 June 2017 (Vox) – In September 2016, speaking to an audience of fossil fuel executives at a Shale Insight conference in Pittsburgh, Donald Trump promised, “Oh, you will like me so much.”They didn’t give him much money during his campaign, presumably because, like most people, they were confident he wouldn’t win. […]

Scott Pruitt, outspoken and forceful, moves to the center of power within the Trump administration – “Mr. Pruitt has emerged as a foreman of a wrecking crew”

By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis 2 June 2017 (The Washington Post) – Less than four months ago, Scott Pruitt arrived in Washington with few connections to President Trump’s inner circle and took the helm of an agency where many employees were openly hostile to him.But the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency has emerged […]

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