– Trump Taps Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt As EPA Head:
In yet another controversial pick, according to Reuters, Trump has chose Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head up the Environmental Protection Agency.
BREAKING: Trump to appoint Oklahoma Attorney General Pruitt as EPA head – transition team. https://t.co/P7Fz6s4ano
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) December 7, 2016
Pruitt has been a very outspoken critic of President Obama’s EPA, has sued the agency on mulitple occassions and has also questioned “the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind,” having called the “debate … far from settled.”
According to the Environmental Defense Fund, Pruitt previously boasted that he “led the charge with repeated notices and subsequent lawsuits against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for their [sic] leadership’s activist agenda.” Moreover, per Reuters, Pruitt led the charge for Oklahoma in restoring environmental regulatory oversight to the states and away for the agency he’s slated to run.
Pruitt was elected Oklahoma’s attorney general in November 2010 and has focused on restoring more regulatory oversight to states and limiting federal regulations.
As his state’s top legal official, he sued the agency is he poised to lead multiple times, including a pending lawsuit to topple the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of Democratic President Barack Obama’s climate change strategy.
With that kind of record, we’re sure this pick, like a couple others, will ruffle some feathers on the left.
Other candidates thought to be in the running for the post included the following:
* Jeff Holmstead, energy lawyer, former EPA official during George W. Bush administration
* Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in private equity firm Gryphon Investors
* Leslie Rutledge, Republican Arkansas attorney general
* Carol Comer, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management* * *
Here is what we wrote yesterday on Trump’s appointments made to date:
President-elect Trump will have about 4,000 government positions to fill, including some of the most important posts in the US government. As CNN details below, cabinet positions require Senate confirmation, but other key posts are completely up to the discretion of the President.
So far 9 of the 16 ‘big’ ones have been named…
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