BOSTON– Today, despite unprecedented opposition, the Senate voted to approve Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator. Pruitt, Oklahoma’s Attorney General and Big Oil’s full-time man on the inside, has shaped his career around attacking environmental policy and the EPA itself.
Please see International Policy Director Tamar Lawrence-Samuel’s statement below:
“Pruitt is only qualified to do one thing: Big Oil’s bidding. Appointing Pruitt EPA Administrator is akin to hiring a burglar to housesit. His career has been focused on dismantling the very institution he’s now being tasked to run.
Scott Pruitt is a deliberately perverse and dangerous choice for EPA Administrator. He has an obsession with attacking and undermining the vital functions of the institution he’ll now run that borders on maniacal.
At the very least, the Senate should have been able to review the thousands of emails between Pruitt and the fossil fuel industry an Oklahoma judge ordered be released by Tuesday. Instead, we will likely learn the extent of Pruitt’s greasy relationship with Big Oil, Gas and Coal just days after he is confirmed.
This confirmation is just the latest in the Trump regime’s anti-environmental inquisition, which has been met with vehement opposition at every turn. We stand with the senators of all stripes that voted in opposition of Pruitt, and with the millions of people, including the hundreds of EPA employees, across the country who are demanding a government that advances the interests of people and the environment, not corporate profits.
We will march. We will resist. And we will organize to oppose this regime as long as it continues to advance the interests of corporations over those of the people it ought to represent.”
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