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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...

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....

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...

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt announced on Monday that he will revise the agency’s Obama-era emissions and gas mileage standards for automobiles. “The Obama EPA’s determination was wrong,” said Pruitt in a press release on Monday. “Obama’s EPA cut the midterm evaluation process short with politically charged expediency, made assumptions about the standards that didn’t comport with reality and set the standards too high.” The EPA also announced on Monday that they will work with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to develop a notice and comment rulemaking to establish less onerous emissions standards and Corporate Average...

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...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to use a Virginia car dealership on Tuesday as the setting to tout its rejection of the Obama administration’s landmark vehicle fuel efficiency rules, a move that could put automakers in the middle of a battle between the Trump administration and California. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt plans to sign a declaration by Sunday that the Obama administration’s vehicle efficiency rules for 2022 through 2025 are “not appropriate” and must be revised, Reuters reported last week. Pruitt is expected to speak at an event at a Chevrolet dealership in suburban Washington and will joined...

In his first year as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt has already transformed the agency in many ways. He spoke exclusively to The Daily Signal before addressing attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual Reagan Dinner. An edited transcript of the interview is below. Rob Bluey: You gave a speech at CPAC last year where you were just at the beginning of your tenure at the Environmental Protection Agency, and you outlined some of the things that you wanted to do. Here we are a year later, you’ve repealed, taken back, 22 regulations at a savings...

According to two former Administrators, current federal Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has set the agency back by anything from several years to as much as three decades due to “regulatory rollbacks, mass attrition and budget cuts.” That sounds ominous. It isn’t. At present EPA is operating under FY2017 funding levels. While projected FY2018 funding cuts will be substantial, they have not yet taken place. The FY2018 budget’s 28% reduction for the Superfund program and $427 million cut to geographic programs such as the Great Lakes, Puget Sound, and Chesapeake Bay are reasons for concern. But EPA is known...

The White House plans to withdraw Kathleen Hartnett White's nomination to head the Council on Environmental Quality, a White House official confirmed to CNN Saturday. Hartnett White, who would have overseen environmental and energy policies across the government, had described the belief in "global warming" as a "kind of paganism" for "secular elites" during a September 2016 interview on "The Right Perspective," an online conservative radio show. She has also said the goal of climate activists and the United Nations was an all-powerful, one-world government and "planetary management," KFile reported. President Donald Trump announced Hartnett White's nomination in October and...

Shortly after taking office, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt set out to permanently limit the agency’s regulatory power in what he billed as a “Back to Basics” agenda focusing on cleaning up toxic waste and providing safe drinking water ― but not curbing new industrial pollution.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, the conservative former attorney general of Oklahoma, is interested in replacing Attorney General Jeff Sessions if that job becomes available, sources with knowledge of the matter said on Friday. President Donald Trump has openly criticized Sessions for months, provoking speculation that the attorney general might resign or be fired. The EPA chief would likely accept the position if it were offered by Trump, a source close to Pruitt told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Jahan Wilcox, an EPA spokesman, in an email denied that Pruitt was interested in serving...

Washington (CNN)Hundreds of Environmental Protection Agency employees have exited their posts at the agency over the course of President Donald Trump's first year in office, a report by the New York Times and ProPublica said Friday.

Environmental Protection Agency officials are “leaving in droves”, reports the New York Times. More than 700 people have left the Environmental Protection Agency since President Trump took office, a wave of departures that puts the administration nearly a quarter of the way toward its goal of shrinking the agency to levels last seen during the Reagan administration. What marvellous news to ease us all into the festive Christmas spirit, eh readers? Why, it’s like the final scene in A Christmas Carol where Scrooge repents of all his miserliness, his nephew Fred gets a big fat turkey, Bob Cratchit gets a...

A proposed gold and copper mine that nearly got buried by the Obama administration moved closer to reality when its developers filed new permits with the federal government. The company behind Pebble Mine, in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, were poised Friday to file a wetlands-fill permit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The permit application by the Pebble Limited Partnership, a subsidiary of Northern Dynasty Minerals, marks a milestone for the project that has seen renewed interest since President Trump appointed former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. “At the outset of 2017, we established three ambitious...

The Environmental Protection Agency has shrunk considerably since Scott Pruitt took over as administrator. In fact, the agency is back to President Reagan-era staff levels. Over 700 EPA personnel have either retired, quit, or taken voluntary buyouts since Pruitt took over...