Trump’s controversial choice for head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, has been confirmed to head the EPA in a 52 to 46 vote. The only Democrats to vote for Pruitt were Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, widely seen as a vote due to their state’s dependence on energy production. The main question now is where Pruitt goes from here.
Pruitt, before he was nominated to run the EPA, was suing it in his role at Attorney General of Oklahoma. In fact, even as Pruitt was being confirmed, news broke that an Oklahoma court had ordered him to release thousands of pages of correspondence between Pruitt’s office and the oil-and-gas industry, as he wasn’t compliant with state records laws on the subject.
Pruitt’s stance on the environment has seen an unusual degree of objection. Even the Audubon Society, widely seen as centrist and which had never objected to a Presidential appointment before, objected to his taking on the role. Pruitt will, many believe, reverse Obama-era policies that encouraged renewable energy and the phasing-out of fossil fuel power plants and follow up on the GOP’s reversal of a dumping regulation by removing various bodies of water from the Waters Of The United States rule. Of course, what policies he will actually pursue must wait until he takes control of the agency, which is expected to happen early next week.
(via CNBC)