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A $43,000 soundproof telephone booth that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt put in his office has caused federal watchdogs to speak up loudly. On Monday, the General Accountability Office sent an eight-page letter to Senate lawmakers reporting that the booth violated federal spending law that caps the amount a presidential appointee can spend on upgrading their office at $5,000 without notifying the appropriations committees in the Senate and House beforehand. GAO General Counsel Thomas Armstrong also wrote that the purchase violated the Antideficiency Act, "because EPA obligated appropriated funds in a manner specifically prohibited by law.” The booth —...

A top government ethics official wants the Environmental Protection Agency to address any violations linked to Administrator Scott Pruitt’s spending habits, his condo lease from a lobbyist and his personnel decisions. In a letter dated Friday and released Monday, David J. Apol, the acting director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, took the atypical step of telling EPA officials that several recent ethics questions deserve further scrutiny. “Public trust demands that all employees act in the public interest, and free from any actual or perceived conflicts,” he wrote to Kevin Minoli, the EPA’s principal deputy general counsel and the...

As California's Summer Gas Is Approaching $4.00/gal what can we expect from President Trump and changes to onerous EPA regulations? Part of gasoline’s price increase is largely seasonal, as refiners tend to process less crude oil into fuel during maintenance and are starting to transition to summer-grade gasoline, which is more expensive to make. According to analysts prices will likely climb further as the weather warms and driving picks up. We need to get gas prices under control in order to MAGA.

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has faced an "unprecedented" number of death threats, according to an agency spokesman. His statement follows reports Pruitt has spent millions on security despite no proof his life was in danger. “According to EPA’s Assistant Inspector General, Scott Pruitt has faced an unprecedented amount of death threats against him and his family,” agency spokesman Jahan Wilcox said late Friday. “Americans should all agree that members of the president’s Cabinet should be kept safe from these violent threats.” The statement was obtained Saturday by Fox News and included a list of several published reports about such incidents....

White House chief of staff John Kelly has urged President Trump to fire embattled EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, whose ethics and judgment are being questioned over a series of decisions he has made involving spending, housing and his management style. Kelly and other White House officials have concluded that Pruitt should leave, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. But Trump is continuing to back Pruitt, viewing him as an effective implementer of his deregulatory agenda by gutting or delaying a number of EPA regulations imposed by the Obama administration. Trump on Friday decried what he views as a media...

On Monday, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt announced his plans to scrap Obama-era Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for passenger cars and trucks, which require automobile manufacturers maintain a fleet-wide average of 54.5 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2025. This bold move by Pruitt will result in more affordable vehicles and additional cash in the pockets of families across the country. Mandates under the previous administration were negotiated when the economy was depressed and retail gas prices approached $4 per gallon. Proponents of tougher fuel economy standards used these circumstances to argue for ever-more fuel-efficient cars....

President Donald Trump ridiculed the increasing slew of negative news about Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt. “Do you believe that the Fake News Media is pushing hard on a story that I am going to replace A.G. Jeff Sessions with EPA Chief Scott Pruitt, who is doing a great job but is TOTALLY under siege?” Trump asked. “Do people really believe this stuff? So much of the media is dishonest and corrupt!” Pruitt is facing several media reports raising concerns of pursuing perks in office including travel, new office furniture, getting discounted rental fees at his D.C. condo, and...

The left's crusade against Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt should be seen for what it is -- a witch hunt. We don't need any more conservatives hanged by leftists who major in criminalizing political differences and minor in slander. How dare a Republican president appoint an environmental heretic to head an administrative agency the left views as its sole, separate and absolute property? This agency exists to serve the deep state -- the entrenched federal government bureaucracy that is tailor-made to advance the left's agenda and operate above accountability. This conspiratorially organized assault against Pruitt is precisely what Barack...

President Donald Trump floated replacing Attorney General Jeff Sessions with Scott Pruitt as recently as this week, even as the scandal-ridden head of the Environmental Protection Agency has faced a growing list of negative headlines, according to people close to the President. "He was 100% still trying to protect Pruitt because Pruitt is his fill-in for Sessions," one source familiar with Trump's thinking told CNN. Though the President has, at times, floated several people a day for multiple positions in his administration that are already occupied, the proposition reveals just how frustrated Trump remains with Sessions because of his decision...

An on-again, off-again effort to restrict harmful methane emissions on federal lands is off — again. A federal judge in Wyoming has halted the clean-air rule indefinitely. Judge Scott Skavdahl says it "makes little sense" to force oil and gas companies to comply with the Obama-era rule when the Trump administration has moved to roll back the 2016 regulation. Skavdahl says enforcing the rule "provides minimal public benefit" while imposing potentially significant costs on industry. Wednesday's ruling is the latest in a back-and-forth series of court decisions and administrative actions as the Trump administration tries to weaken or delay a...

Samantha Dravis, the Environmental Protection Agency senior counsel and associate administrator in the Office of Policy, has resigned, CBS News' Jacqueline Alemany confirmed Thursday. Davis told CBS News in a statement, "It has been an honor to serve in this role at EPA, and I am enormously grateful for the opportunity. I wish Administrator Pruitt and all of the public servants at EPA the very best." A source familiar with Dravis' resignation said that she has been looking to exit the administration for some time to pursue opportunities in the private sector. She submitted her resignation letter last week, days...

Several weeks after taking the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency, Administrator Scott Pruitt was running late and stuck in Washington, D.C., traffic. Sources tell CBS News that he wanted to use his vehicle's lights and sirens to get to his official appointment, but the lead agent in charge of his security detail advised him that sirens were to be used only in emergencies. Less than two weeks later that agent was removed from Pruitt's detail, reassigned to a new job within the EPA. Special Agent Eric Weese, a 16-year veteran of the EPA, was replaced by Pasquale "Nino" Perotta....

Bureaucrats use Candy Crush, dating apps on taxpayer-funded phones At least one employee at the Environmental Protection Agency downloaded the app "Boycott Trump" on a government phone. Employees are also using dating apps, playing Candy Crush, and watching Netflix on their taxpayer-funded phones, according to a new report by Cause of Action Institute, a nonprofit oversight group. Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request inquiring about employees use of Signal, an encrypted text messaging app, revealed EPA employees are using their government-issued phones for far more than government business. One anti-Trump employee downloaded the Boycott Trump app, which...

After Donald Trump, the individual in DC with the biggest target on his back is Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt. When he was attorney general of Oklahoma, he sued the EPA more than a dozen times to get the powerful regulatory agency to stay within its legal authority. His nomination was deeply concerning to radical environmentalists inside and outside the media. As a result, he and his team have been under a microscope since even before his confirmation in early 2017.Well-funded environmental groups, many with former EPA staffers, deluge the agency with FOIA requests to catch someone in...

CNN and the Reagan administration were born in the same year. Presidencies have been partly a “reality show” ever since. The Donald Trump reality show this week turns to overhauling the Obama fuel-economy mandate. Let’s recall a few things about how those rules were born. Team Obama’s target of 54.5 miles per gallon, as a congressional investigation later found, was not the product of science and engineering but the White House’s desire for an impressive sounding “headline number.” (The decimal was apparently included to show the White House had a sense of humor.) So full of loopholes, credits (including for...

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday took the Obama fuel economy rules off autopilot. This is good news for consumers, automakers and the U.S. economy, but the Trump Administration’s big test will be negotiating around the political potholes. Corporate average fuel economy (Cafe) standards are a vestige of the 1970s gas shortages. Like the Nixon-era price controls, the fuel standards were intended to reduce gas consumption. But the environmental left long ago hijacked the rules to impose their vision of an electric-car future. In 2012 the Obama EPA turned up the Cafe dial and mandated a fleetwide average of 54.5...

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt defended his living arrangement in Washington during the presidential transition, noting that career ethics officials at the EPA found no problems with his choice of where to sleep. “This was an Airbnb-type situation where I rented literally one room that was used in a temporary status until I found more permanent residence.” @EPAScottPruitt says. Media reports, Pruitt told The Daily Signal during an interview Tuesday, are incomplete and don’t reflect “the truth.” “I think the information has been, as things go, I think very intermittent and very sporadic and not terribly complete with respect...

There’s an old saying that when you’re taking a lot of flack, you know you’re over the target. Right now this explains the liberal/media freakout about EPA administrator Scott Pruitt. Pruitt is systematically dismantling the legacy of decades of egregious bureaucratic overreach by the EPA, including ending the corrupt “sue-and-settle” practice, stopping the practice of refusing to share raw data with outside researchers that bear on multi-hundred-billion dollar regulatory schemes, and deep-sixing the so-called “Clean Power Plan,” which was likely to fail in federal court anyway. (This week’s sensible decision to rescind the Obama new car fuel economy requirements is...

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — The cost of gas is up across the country, including in Maryland, and is inching toward the highest price in three years. Gas is going up about a penny every other day — 15 cents in the past month. “We’ll be paying the highest prices for this time of year since 2014,” said Christine Delise with AAA. Gas companies are changing over to a different summer blend. To do so, some refineries shut down, leading to the classic market principal of supply and demand. A tighter supply means they can demand more for your fuel. Demand is...

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on Monday formally scrapped a key piece of the Obama administration’s fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light-duty trucks, throwing the future of the program into doubt. In a statement, Mr. Pruitt said the program, known as the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE standards, fell victim to politics during the final days of the Obama administration. He said his predecessors at the EPA rushed through rules governing fuel economy for model years 2022 through 2025, and that those rules simply aren’t realistic. “The Obama Administration’s determination was wrong,” he said. “Obama’s EPA cut the midterm evaluation...