Senate Approves Scott Pruitt to Head the Environmental Protection Agency

President Donald Trump’s pick for EPA administrator was among the most contentious of his cabinet nominees, and Democrats held an all-night session on the Senate floor in a failed bid to block his confirmation.

Rather than wait to see what Pruitt’s office has been trying to hide in those emails, Senate Republicans rushed a vote-and early Friday afternoon confirmed Pruitt to serve as EPA administrator by a 52-46 vote.

Two Democrat senators, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin III and North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp, said they’ll vote for Pruitt, and only one Republican, Maine’s Susan Collins, said she’ll oppose him.

Pruitt is perhaps the most controversial appointment in the history of the EPA – the Oklahoma attorney general has spent years fighting the role and reach of the organisation he now heads. The implication is that Pruitt was never exactly transparent nor objective in his earlier skirmishes with the EPA. Prior to the vote, only Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from ME, said she’d vote against Pruitt.

According to Capito, Pruitt answered more than 200 direct questions from committee members during his confirmation hearing and more than 1,000 follow-up questions.

Even as Senate Republicans moved towards confirming Pruitt over the strong objections of environmental groups and Democrats, an Oklahoma judge on Thursday ordered Pruitt to hand over thousands of emails related to his communications with the fossil fuel industry.

Democrats used the developments to push for a delay in Pruitt’s confirmation vote but were repeatedly denied. “Attorney General Pruitt understands that the EPA needs a serious course correction – that it must get back to listening to the states and respecting the rule of law, and most importantly, regaining the trust of the American people”.

EPA employees, including scientists, lawyers and policy experts, have also been calling their senators to ask them to vote against Pruitt, The New York Times reports.

We now have a Senate-confirmed administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) again.

“We don’t have all the information we need to make an informed vote on this nomination”, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is at a security conference and is not expected to vote.

Trump is likely to issue executive orders as soon as next week to reshape the EPA, sources said.

While it’s unlikely there are any smoking guns in the emails that would have been enough to change Republicans’ minds on Pruitt, Democratic senators called for another 248 hours of debate, which would have in effect delayed the confirmation vote until February 27, after the deadline for making the emails public.

Nevertheless, Pruitt will now, one way or another, direct that agency, whose stated mission is to “protect human health and the environment”.

Meanwhile, since February 6, almost 330 additional former EPA officials have signed a letter publicly opposing Pruitt’s confirmation, bringing the total to 773.