People in and out of media constantly claim that Trump broke presidential norms. This is true— if by “norms” one means not being an openly criminal bigot and all-around asinine jerk—but that truth can obscure a key understanding of Trump. Because as norm breaking as Trump was in his persona, he was a devoutly typical Republican in making actual law. Trump’s policies were mostly the standard far-right wing fare: tax cuts for the truly wealthy coupled with cruel attacks on people of color and the environment.
Which brings us to Scott Pruitt, the Trump administration’s first Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator.
Do you remember this particularly weaselly mountebank?
If you do, it’s likely because he installed a SCIF—a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility—at the EPA, charging the taxpayers $43,000 for his super cool top secret phone booth. Hey, people need privacy when they are assiduously working to undermine the ability of humanity to survive on the only planet we have.
Or maybe you remember him because he used taxpayer money to rent both private planes and military jets for travel to his home in Oklahoma. No commercial travel for this great man. Don’t want to mix with the plebes—otherwise known as people who don’t want the environment destroyed and thus might “lash out.”
Or maybe you remember that he regularly sent his EPA staff out to fetch him Greek yogurt, protein bars, or snacks from Dean and Deluca. Or sometimes he used paid staff to drive him around as he tried to find a favorite moisturizer he once used at a Ritz-Carlton. Really.
The corruption gets even worse. You might remember Pruitt as the guy who lived, at well below market rate, in a Capitol Hill condo owned by a Health Care lobbyist, whose husband lobbied the EPA. Conflict of interests? Not for him. And it gets worse still, because in an apparent emulation of his boss, he stiffed the owners on the rent. The couple eventually got rid of him by changing the locks. It takes a real gem to make a couple who are right-wing corporate lobbyists the victims of a story.
Of course, there is more, much more, but you get the point. For Scott Pruitt, the EPA was one big opportunity for graft. Graft for him personally and graft for wealthy corporate despoilers. Maybe that is why, when confronted with a chance to destroy the EPA, he chose to keep it. Which brings us back to his humanoid toxic wasteland of a boss.
When Pruitt met with Trump during the 2016 presidential transition, Trump asked him, “'Scott, should we shut down the agency?” In reply, Pruitt defended the existence of the EPA. "I said, 'No, Mr. President, the agency has a very, very important mission in this country with respect to the environment.'" (It is telling that Pruitt quotes himself bleating out empty corporate blather.)
We know about this exchange because E&E News got ahold of a video of a ceremony unveiling Pruitt’s portrait in the Green Room at EPA headquarters. In his remarks at the occasion Pruitt told the story about Trump asking him whether they should abolish the agency.
E&E News has more details:
Pruitt said closing the agency has been discussed at times, primarily because EPA was created by executive order. On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump talked about reducing the agency, leaving "a little bit."
But the agency remained. In a truly Orwellian twist, Pruitt defended his EPA tenure by claiming that he upheld the regulatory mandate of the agency.
"I think many believe, when we took over in the first quarter of 2017, that we're going to put a vacancy sign on the front door, and the exact opposite happened," Pruitt said. "We came into this agency, in my view, and said we're going to do what the statute requires, we're going to take our statutory responsibilities seriously."
The “responsibilities” he took seriously were to undermine any regulation he could get ahold of. Alas, there were many. Pruitt and his successor, the sadly more effective Andrew Wheeler, first attacked Obama-era attempts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Which is not surprising, given that Pruitt claimed climate disruption may “help humans flourish.” To abet this “flourishing” the Trump/Pruitt EPA increased allowable CO2 emissions from cars, trucks and power plants. Those rollbacks alone will cause thousands of deaths per year. Trump administration rollbacks of mercury pollution will cause many more, along with severe economic damage.
Not stopping there, Pruitt’s EPA weakened protections for nearly half of the nation’s wetlands. They also limited protections for wildlife.
In all, the Trump administration rolled back more than 100 environmental rules. The New York Times compiled a list of the destruction (behind a paywall). The Times quotes Hana V. Vizcarra, a staff attorney at Harvard’s Environmental and Energy Law Program who has tracked Trump administration policy changes as saying, “this is a very aggressive attempt to rewrite our laws and reinterpret the meaning of environmental protections. This administration is leaving a truly unprecedented legacy.”
Moreover, many of these rollbacks will not be easy to undo.
Some will. Biden already cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline and halted new leases for drilling on public lands. And by using the Congressional Review Act, Democrats can use a simple majority vote to wipe out regulations finalized within the last 60 days of Trump’s term.
But others will be tougher. Even the Congressional Review Act is limited: it forbids the enactment of a substantially similar rule. It is thus of little use if the Biden administration wishes to significantly strengthen protections. Most importantly, many of the Trump administration rollbacks of environmental regulations were achieved by replacing them with weaker measures, and therefore need to be replaced with newly created strong ones. But that process usually takes about two years due to the necessity of following labyrinth legal paths. (Rule changes must be proposed and published, public comment allowed, and legal, economic, and scientific justifications made. Last, technical analysis on the likely impacts of the proposed rule must be conducted and published.)
All of which means that the legacies of scoundrels such as Pruitt, however laughably dishonest, are not easily overcome. He may have told Trump to keep the EPA, but only because Republicans have weaponized it for ill. We remember Pruitt for his outlandish corruption, but it is his policies that affected us for the worse.
Biden has rightly won plaudits for appointing an impressive environment team. His choice to head the EPA, Michael Regan, has an enormous task ahead of him in merely undoing Trump’s damage to the agency, let alone using it to advance environmental quality. Fortunately, he appears to be up to the challenge.