Employees don’t get to choose the boss. That’s a sad fact in both business and government. And employees don’t often complain about the new boss, because when they do, they’re putting their own jobs on the line.
But that’s exactly what's happening at the EPA.
Nearly 450 former Environmental Protection Agency employees Monday urged Congress to reject President Trump’s nominee to run the agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, even as current employees in Chicago sent the same message during a noon rally.
Former employees are in the clear—though don’t discount the idea that the Trump regime might dock the pensions of ‘haters’ —but current employees are definitely putting themselves out there. Because it’s that important.
“Our perspective is not partisan,” the group wrote, noting that many of the 447 names on the letter had served as career employees under both Republican and Democratic administrations. “However, every EPA administrator has a fundamental obligation to act in the public’s interest based on current law and the best available science. Mr. Pruitt’s record raises serious questions about whose interests he has served to date and whether he agrees with the long-standing tenets of U.S. environmental law.”
At its heart, the EPA is a scientific agency. At his heart, and in his actions, Pruitt is an anti-science candidate.
In an unusual move, EPA employees in the agency’s Region 5 office, headquartered in Chicago, participated in a downtown rally during their lunch hour on Monday and called on the Senate to reject the nomination and any efforts to roll back the agency’s authorities.
Though attention at the moment is focused on the singularly unqualified Betsy DeVos, Pruitt is at least as bad. It’s not that he doesn’t know the issues. It’s that he’s consistently worked to deny and distort to push an anti-environment agenda. This is a guy with eight open lawsuits against the agency he’s slated to head, who won’t even recuse himself from the lawsuits in which he is the plaintiff.
Opposition to Pruitt from environmental groups and congressional Democrats has only grown more vehement since his confirmation hearing last month, in which he declined to say whether he would recuse himself from his ongoing cases against the EPA if confirmed as the agency’s new leader. In addition to those legal attacks, opponents have pointed to his substantial financial support from the oil and gas industry and his views on climate change as reasons he should not lead the agency charged with protecting the air and water of all Americans.