In the backroom of the shebeen, where we’re taking bets FOR AMUSEMENT PURPOSES ONLY on who will be the next member of the president*’s cabinet to get shuffled out of town, we’re seeing a lot of action suddenly on Scott Pruitt, the extraction industry sublet hired to run the Environmental Protection Agency. He has the same private-airplane problem that afflicted the departed Tom Price. We paid 25 Gs to buy him a Cone of Silence. And now, The New York Times is fitting his political career for a shroud.

Since taking office in February, Mr. Trump’s E.P.A. chief has held back-to-back meetings, briefing sessions and speaking engagements almost daily with top corporate executives and lobbyists from all the major economic sectors that he regulates — and almost no meetings with environmental groups or consumer or public health advocates, according to a 320-page accounting of his daily schedule from February through May, the most detailed look yet at what Mr. Pruitt has been up to since he took over the agency. Many of those players have high-profile matters pending before the agency, with potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in regulatory costs at stake. Some of these same companies and trade associations were allies of Mr. Pruitt when, as Oklahoma’s attorney general, he sued the E.P.A. at least 14 times to try to block rules Mr. Pruitt is now in charge of enforcing.

Pruitt’s selection was the most egregious example of a cabinet pick made specifically to undermine what the goal of the agency is supposed to be, and specifically to enrage people you don’t like. His nomination was a farce from the start; at the time he was nominated, he was suing the EPA as attorney general for the barely surviving petro-state of Oklahoma. He knows nothing about protecting the environment, and he cares less, and if the Republican majorities in the Congress had the conscience and or the cojones that god gave the common brick, his nomination would have failed utterly. He is the walking definition of the concept of governing the country by not governing it.

In recent weeks, Freedom of Information Act requests from environmentalists, other nonprofit groups and news organizations including The Washington Post have dislodged documents that hint at Mr. Pruitt’s typical day. But for the first time, the most recent release, based on an open records request by the liberal nonprofit American Oversight, includes a description of the topics discussed at each of the meetings, and a list of all the agency officials and corporate executives scheduled to attend.

Good god, the man is the worst EPA director since Anne Gorsuch, mother of the new Supreme Court justice, a justice who’ll have Pruitt's back whenever necessary. Just a small circle of friends, is all.



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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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