Trump Picks EPA Critic Scott Pruitt to Head EPA

For conservatives, however, it was a home run. “It helps guide everything we do, and we expect that Pruitt will understand that in regulatory matters dealing with agriculture and the environment”.

Jody Freeman, a law professor at Harvard University, said such a move could create complications for the EPA, however, as it may be required legally to explain and support the change in direction.

In 2014 the the New York Timesrevealed Pruitt had sent letters to the EPA criticising the agency’s air pollution data, which had been written by fossil fuel industry lobbyists and copied and pasted onto his own stationary.

Liberal groups also assailed his selection, saying Pruitt would undermine efforts to regulate energy companies.

President-elect Trump interviewed more than a dozen candidates for his administration at his New Jersey golf club over the weekend, including Mitt Romney, Rudy Guliani, Chris Christie and Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, who has been tough on immigration, and others. The U.S.is already burning less coal and more natural gas.

He states that the rule is clearly unconstitutional.

Under Pruitt’s guidance, Oklahoma became one of 17 states that is challenging an EPA rule that redefines what waterways fall under the jurisdiction of the federal agency. It claimed that small waterways such as wetlands and streams are under federal, not state, jurisdiction.

And yesterday the President-elect reportedly met with Hollywood actor and environmental campaigner Leonardo DiCaprio to discuss the potential for green jobs and investment. He convinced a federal court to block its implementation, as well.

Though Trump and Gore’s topic of discussion wasn’t directly referenced in his statement, it is speculated that climate change was on the list.

In an opinion piece in the National Journal, he described the debate over global warming as “far from settled”.

Pruitt has been the attorney general of Oklahoma since 2011 during which time he served two terms as the president of the Republican Attorneys General Association. Barbara Boxer, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Pruitt has won plaudits from energy industry leaders for picking fights with the EPA. In 2013, Pruitt joined several other attorneys general in unsuccessfully seeking to force the EPA to release documents showing how it “cooperates” with environmental groups on the settlements. The case is now stalled in the courts. Previously he was an Oklahoma state senator for eight years.

“I stand ready to use the full power of my office to compel their enforcement by the agency”, said New York’s Schneiderman. In this case, as with the others, Pruitt seems likely to be taken to court. “The system we have in Oklahoma is wrong and flawed”, he declared. “Even under Republican administrations, George W. Bush, they didn’t appoint the head of the EPA to dismantle the EPA”.

Grijalva, who is co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, highlighted the fact that on Pruitt’s watch, Oklahoma has been stricken by a remarkable number of major, human-caused earthquakes due to fracking and the associated waste disposal operations across the state.