Scott Pruitt, President Trump's pick for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is withholding thousands of emails related to his ties to major energy interests who may have donated to his political causes.
Such stonewalling makes it difficult for senators to vote on his nomination since they can't know if these contacts were appropriate. It is particularly disturbing because Pruitt—who as EPA administrator would be charged with overseeing vital clean air and clean water protections for our nation—has a long history of opposing bedrock safeguards in concert with industry players.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) filed a report Tuesday about the absent emails with an Oklahoma court, the latest chapter in the watchdog group's two-year saga to get a response to its request for records from the Oklahoma Attorney General's office. An emergency hearing before the court has been scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 16.
Pruitt's absent emails so concerned Senate Democrats that they have asked that voting on Pruitt's nomination be postponed until after the Oklahoma court holds its hearing. Meanwhile, questions surrounding Pruitt's nomination continue to grow.
In January, Environmental Defense Fund filed a Freedom of Information Act request for EPA records relating to development of Pruitt's bare bones ethics agreement with the EPA. Unfortunately, the request to get these records swiftly, in time to inform consideration of Pruitt's nomination, was rejected. We continue to wait for these key documents.
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QUOTATION OF THE DAY
”Secrecy continues to shield the NSA from uncomfortable questions about the growing role of the agency and its contractors in data mining and the burgeoning field of cybersecurity. The only way the American public ever learns what the NSA is doing to them is from whistleblowers, including, most recently, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked documents about the rise of the NSA’s massive data-mining operations during the Obama administration. To keep the war on terror going, the government has tried to make sure that whistleblowers are isolated and ostracized.”
—James Risen, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, 2014
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2012—The death of the Republican dog whistle:
In the idealized version of the GOP primary, establishment Republicans would curry favor with their Wall Street pals while sending coded dog whistles to their foot soldiers—on race, immigration, reproductive freedoms, etc. Those dog whistles would motivate the GOP base without revealing their true radical nature to the American mainstream. It was a genius system while it worked, one that saw no parallel on the progressive side.
But the days of the dog whistle are over. The election of President Barack Obama created an entire cottage industry trying to prove how un-American and Kenyan he supposedly is, while Republicans like Rep. Pete Hoekstra run blatantly anti-Asian ads. Republicans laugh about electrocuting immigrants who will cut off your head in the desert if they're not stopped, while passing laws openly hostile to brown people. Attacks on homosexuals have escalated to new hysterical highs as society becomes more tolerant and open to equality.
HIGH IMPACT STORIES • TOP COMMENTS
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin, Joan McCarter, and Armando join host David Waldman in surveying the burning Landscape o’ Lunacy. Republicans circle the wagons, but must be wondering if they can survive it. Or at least survive longer than we do in Crazytown.
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