While the president is overseas, definitely NOT performing Satanic rituals, scrutiny of his cabinet of deniers continues apace, as does the increasingly friendly competition between the Washington Post and New York Times. Let’s take a look at what broke over the weekend.
At the Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin looks at the company Interior Secretary Zinke has kept since his appointment. And “company” is the right word, since he’s been meeting almost exclusively with oil and gas industry executives or representatives, while the Native American and environment stakeholders traditionally involved with managing public lands have gotten the cold shoulder.
Meanwhile over at the New York Times, Eric Lipton reports on just how serious Trump was about draining the swamp (spoiler: not very). Not only is Trump hiring lobbyists despite his own ban on doing so, but now the administration is trying to keep those decisions secret so the public doesn’t even know what swamp creatures have been hired. The Office of Government Ethics requested the information (something Obama made public automatically) and the Trump administration has responded with a letter that amounts to: Nah.
Fortunately, there are always other ways to suss out industry influence, and if this administration is anything, it’s not subtle. This unabashed industrial influence is highlighted by Hiroko Tabuchi and (again) Eric Lipton in a Saturday NYT story updating the tight relationship between Devon Energy and Scott Pruitt. Less than a week after Pruitt’s swearing in as head of the EPA, Devon sent the EPA a letter saying that it was reconsidering settling a case to pay a six-figure fine and install pollution reduction equipment. Instead, it wanted to reopen negotiations, pay a measly $25,000 and scrap plans to clean up its act.
While this reversal is hardly surprising, it’s enough to trigger some Congressional interest, as Senator Carper (D-DE) sent a letter to the EPA requesting information on what the EPA’s been up to during Pruitt’s tenure, compared to what it did in terms of enforcement under Obama.
Good luck to Senator Carper though, because so far the Trump administration doesn’t seem to be taking transparency seriously. While the right loved to trash Obama’s promise to be the most transparent administration in history (their criticism to a limited extent warranted), Trump’s certainly not going to claim that mantle. He won’t end up as the third or fourth most transparent administration of the last thirty years.
At this rate, he’d be lucky to take the fifth.
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