Free Republic

The Trump administration announced a major policy change in an effort to win back farm country, allowing the year-round sale of a higher concentration of ethanol. Coinciding with a campaign stop in Iowa, President Trump announced the lifting of the ban of E15 during summer months, a significant win for the corn and ethanol industries. Up until now, E15 cannot be sold during the summer because of smog concerns. Ethanol producers saw their share prices skyrocket on the news. The decision comes after roughly 18 months of damaging policies to the agricultural industry. Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt became public...

Justice Department attorneys told a federal court Wednesday that EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler would discontinue efforts to repeal ozone regulations imposed in 2015 by the Obama administration...The Trump administration will now defend Obama-era ozone regulations in court against a coalition of states and industries suing to have them overturned. [Recently fired EPA Chief Scott Pruitt filed the original lawsuit while he was A.G. of Oklahoma]

Senior administration officials are clashing over President Trump’s plan to roll back a major environmental rule...[which]...would also challenge the right of California and other states to set their own, more restrictive state-level pollution standards. On one side is the Environmental Protection Agency’s acting chief, Andrew Wheeler, who has tried to put the brakes on the plan, fearing that its legal and technical arguments are weak and will set up the Trump administration for an embarrassing courtroom loss.

We can add “EPA chemical safety science” to the list of taxpayer funded benefits that former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt kept for himself. New emails uncovered by American Oversight show EPA employees were concerned about the level of formaldehyde in an ornate desk that Pruitt had sought to purchase for his office. The emails emerged even as EPA officials have continued to block the release of a scientific report on the dangers of formaldehyde exposure. In early 2017, newly-appointed Administrator Pruitt selected an ornate desk from Amazon and instructed staff to order it. One of the EPA staffers noticed that...

They may gloat all they like, those “progressives.” But this is, at best, a Pyrrhic victory for them. Pruitt is gone. His replacement, Andrew Wheeler, though, is their worst nightmare. He’s an ex-coal-industry lobbyist. He led the team – with Steve Milloy – that killed Cap and Trade in 2009/10. He gets – far more than Scott Pruitt ever did – that environmentalism has nothing to do with saving the planet and everything to do with killing capitalism. Pruitt may be gone. But the same president remains in the White House. And his agenda remains unchanged. The United States is...

WASHINGTON -- The D.C. mom who confronted now-former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on Monday and asked him to resign said she was "jumping up and down" at today's news that he had stepped down. "I have accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Within the Agency Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this. The Senate confirmed Deputy at EPA, Andrew Wheeler, will on Monday assume duties as the acting Administrator of the EPA," President Trump tweeted this afternoon. "I have no doubt that Andy...

Scott Pruitt was the perfect villain: On top of pursuing Presdient Trump’s deregulatory plan for the Environmental Protection Agency, including pulling out from the Paris climate accords, he had a laundry list of ethical and possibly legal violations that put him at the heart of a at least 13 federal investigations. He was easy to criticize, didn’t seem to know his way around Washington, and constantly found himself in the spotlight for undeniably questionable activity. Moreover, his haste and lack of regulatory know-how led to six of his initiatives being struck down by the courts. Now Pruitt is out and...

Xanax for patient Karem—stat! Make it a double. . . Brian Karem, then a Playboy reporter, made his liberal-media bones by haranguing Sarah Huckabee Sanders in the White House press room last year. CNN rewarded Karem for his outburst my naming him an “analyst.” This morning, Karem put on the kind of performance that CNN is paying him for, waxing apocalyptic about the future of the environment and the EPA under Scott Pruitt and his successor, Andrew Wheeler. Excerpts from Karem’s wery, wery scared statement: “[Pruitt] destroyed the EPA . . . People I’ve known in the EPA for 20...

I have accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Within the Agency Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this. The Senate confirmed Deputy at EPA, Andrew Wheeler, will......on Monday assume duties as the acting Administrator of the EPA. I have no doubt that Andy will continue on with our great and lasting EPA agenda. We have made tremendous progress and the future of the EPA is very bright!

Scott Pruitt has resigned as head of the Environmental Protection Agency after a string of controversies involving his leadership, President Trump announced Thursday on Twitter. "Within the Agency Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this," tweeted Trump, who added that EPA Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler would take over as acting administrator effective Monday. ...on Monday assume duties as the acting Administrator of the EPA. I have no doubt that Andy will continue on with our great and lasting EPA agenda. We have made tremendous progress and the future of the EPA...

It looks like Washington D.C. residents are taking Rep. Maxine Water’s advice and confronting members of the Trump administration as they go about their lives in public places. The latest incident occurred Monday in a D.C. restaurant and the target was the EPA’s Scott Pruitt. Bonus points for having a 2-year-old toddler in tow as she confronted him.Kristin Mink, a teacher, was having lunch with her toddler when she noticed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt three tables over. Taking a page out of the social justice warrior’s playbook, she “had to say something”, so she did. To...

A woman publicly confronted Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt while he was eating lunch on Monday and urged him to resign, according to video posted on Facebook. "EPA head Scott Pruitt was 3 tables away as I ate lunch with my child. I had to say something," Kristin Mink posted on Facebook with an accompanying video of her encounter with Pruitt.Minka, who is a schoolteacher according to her Facebook profile, lists off multiple scandals Pruitt has been ensnared in since becoming EPA chief, including the rental of a Capitol Hill condo owned by the wife of an influential...

If Scott Pruitt is scaring deep state environmentalist wackos at the EPA, he must be doing something right . . . Remember Brian Karem, the reporter who harangued Sarah Huckabee Sanders last year over her criticism of CNN? What better way to win CNN’s heart, and sure enough, there was Karem on “New Day” this morning. Karem waxed apoplectic over Scott Pruitt and what he described as the Trump administration’s agenda “to tear down protections, it’s to destroy regulations, it’s to tear down the federal government.” Added Karem: “There are people in the EPA I’ve known for years who are...

In another jab to President Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head, actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) labeled Scott Pruitt the worst EPA administrator of all time. "I pay no attention to what he says. He cannot be taken seriously," Schwarzenegger said at the R20 Austrian World Summit, an annual climate conference he hosts in his home country. "He's the worst Environmental secretary that we have ever had." Schwarzenegger went on to criticize Pruitt for his ties to oil and gas companies. “He's doing the bidding for the oil companies and the coal companies," the 70-year-old Republican told...

The Environmental Protection Agency is barring The Associated Press, CNN and the environmental-focused news organization E&E from a national summit on harmful water contaminants. The EPA blocked the news organizations from attending Tuesday’s Washington meeting, convened by EPA chief Scott Pruitt.

“I like you. You and me, we’re going to be best friends.” It is early January, and Eric Schneiderman is sitting in his 25th-floor office above Lower Manhattan, doing his best Donald Trump impression, puckering his lips into a duck face, scrunching up his nose and lowering his voice into something that resembles the president’s outer-borough growl. Schneiderman is recalling his meeting with Trump in 2010. Back then, Schneiderman was running for attorney general of New York, and Trump was still in his pre-birther, reality TV host phase. Trump had donated money to one of Schneiderman’s opponents in the Democratic...

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has proposed to end the longstanding EPA practice of using secretive, often questionable, questionable, even deceptive science to support agency policy and regulatory initiatives. His proposed rules will ensure that any science underlying agency actions is transparent and publicly available for independent experts to examine and validate – or point out its flaws. It also responds to growing concerns that extensive scientific research in environmental, medical and other arenas cannot be replicated by other scientists, or is compromised by cherry-picked data, poor research design, sloppy analysis or biased researchers. The situation has led to...

The Trump administration has drafted a new set of regulations on planet-warming emissions from cars and light trucks that would dramatically weaken Obama-era standards. The proposal, if implemented, would also set up a legal clash between the federal government and California by challenging the state’s authority to set its own, stricter, air pollution rules. Details of the proposal, which is being jointly drafted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department and is expected to be sent to the White House for approval in coming days, were described to The New York Times by a federal official who had...

According to The Hill: He escaped disaster His strategy was don't apologize and blame others Republicans are concerned, but criticism was muted Pruitt has plenty of allies in Congress Some of his statements could come back to haunt him

Earlier this month, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt denied having any conflicts of interest with Steven Hart, the lobbyist who’s home he has been renting a room in for the generous rate of $50 a day. “Mr. Hart has no client that has business before this agency,” Pruitt said. But new disclosures reveal that the lobbyist met directly with Pruitt at EPA headquarters in July of 2017. Hart’s firm Williams & Jensen has represented Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, for more than a decade and continued to lobby EPA on their behalf in early 2018. In February,...