President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team indicated that E. Scott Pruitt, a Republican and the two-term attorney general (AG) of Oklahoma is Trump’s choice to serve as administrator of the EPA. As AG, Pruitt has fought relentlessly against what he perceives to be federal overreach into the rights of the states and has continually expressed the view that major regulations issued by the Obama EPA are glaring violations of state autonomy established in the U.S. Constitution and federal environmental law.
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Pruitt has joined lawsuits to throw out both EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) and Clean Water Rule, has testified in Congress on multiple occasions against those and other major EPA rules, has written op-ed columns opposing Agency regulations, and has stated that the position held by 97 percent of climate scientists that human activity is altering the earth’s climate is not material to the framework of the Clean Air Act.