On Tuesday, an Alabama grand jury indicted Trey Glenn, the man Trump chose to lead the Southeast region’s EPA office, on charges of violating state ethics laws concerning public officials taking gifts from lobbyists.
Glenn is charged with breaking Alabama’s Ethics Act on multiple counts, stemming from his time as a lobbyist fighting against the EPA’s efforts to clean up a few polluted neighborhoods in Alabama. While the specifics of the case aren’t particularly relevant to a national audience, what is clear is that Glenn lobbied against EPA efforts to clean up pollution.
Then, Trump hired Glenn to run the region’s EPA office--meaning Glenn went from trying to prevent the EPA from doing its job in Alabama to overseeing how the EPA does its job in Alabama (and Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Mississippi).
When Glenn took the EPA position, he reported income from a variety of sources. One of his jobs: working with Big Sky Environmental, the company made famous by its “poop train,” which carried human fecal waste from New York to dispose of in Alabama.
As if Mr. Paid By The Poop Train running the EPA in the South is not sufficiently upsetting, President Trump made another stellar staffing decision this week, nominating Neomi Rao to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals seat that was, until recently, occupied by Brett Kavanaugh.
If that doesn’t set off alarm bells in your mind, you don’t know Rao.
She’s currently head of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the person overseeing and coordinating President Trump’s (de)regulatory agenda. She’s also the founder of the Koch Brothers’ Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason University, and taught there prior to working for Trump.
George Mason has long been a recipient of Koch money (to the tune of at least $50 million), and its spin-off Mercatus Center is a constant source of pseudo-academic papers that justify an anti-regulatory, pro-polluter agenda. But the Administrative State school has also come under fire for the problematic degree of control funders like the Kochs and the Federalist Society have over it, which certainly calls its claims of academic freedom into question.
While Rao’s place at Trump’s White House was concerning, her potential elevation to a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court is far more alarming. Not only is it a life appointment as opposed to one that ends when the Trump administration does, but the D.C. court is also the primary destination for lawsuits involving federal agencies and their ability to create and enforce regulations.
Considering Rao’s career has been built on attacking regulations, and she has been funded by the Kochs and others with a clear profit motive to reduce regulations, it seems clear that if she sits on the bench, at least one seat will always rule in favor of pollution over public health.
But hey, it could be worse--at least she’s not working for the poop train people.