WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency is now on a collision course with itself.

The impending clash comes after the Senate on Friday voted 52-46, along mostly party lines, to confirm Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt — a climate change skeptic who's long battled the agency in court — as the department's new administrator.

His stated mission is simple: Rein in an agency that many Republicans feel has far overstepped its bounds in pursuing a robust regulatory agenda.

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"Change is badly needed at the Environmental Protection Agency, and Scott Pruitt will be that change," said Sen. John Barrasso, the Wyoming Republican who leads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The confirmation, backed by Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, jolts to life an environmental agenda from President Donald Trump that has so far been more talk than action. And it should soon reveal the course the new administration plans to take on climate.

President Donald Trump has given mixed signals about his approach to environmental issues. (Carolyn Kaster/The Associated Press)

That could have particular reverberations in Texas, a leading energy state that has frequently gotten crosswise with the EPA.

Though Pruitt's nomination was never really in doubt, Democrats still pulled out the stops to delay the process. They boycotted a committee vote. They implored Republicans to postpone the final vote. They maximized their speaking time in opposition.

But in the end, they could do little to prevent the confirmation of a man they fear will be the agency's undoing.

"Never have I been forced to consider a candidate to lead the EPA who has been so focused throughout his career on crippling the agency he now hopes to lead," said Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The Trump administration's environmental approach has been closely watched.

The president has said that he is "to a large extent an environmentalist" and that he's "very open-minded" on the environment. But he's also called climate change a "hoax," while campaigning on an aggressive promise to peel back former President Barack Obama's regulatory approach.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., is the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)

The choice of Pruitt to run the EPA signaled which side might win out.

The Oklahoman, in his role as state attorney general, has sued the EPA several times over the years. He's raised particular concern over the Clean Power Plan, Obama's signature effort to reduce carbon emissions over the next decade.

And Pruitt continues to err on the side of skepticism toward climate change.

"Science tells us that climate is changing. Human activity in some manner impacts that change," he said last month. "The ability to measure with precision the extent and degree of that impact and what to do about that is subject to continuing debate and dialogue."

Republicans dismiss the notion that Pruitt is an enemy of the environment, even as they relish his role in taking on EPA over what they describe as unnecessary, job-killing rules.

Lawmakers have already moved ahead in repealing some Obama-era rules through a seldom-used provision known as the Congressional Review Act. But to give a more thorough scrubbing, Congress will have to partner more directly with the Trump administration.

And it's expected that Trump will issue new EPA-related executive actions soon after Pruitt is sworn in.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)

"Texans rightfully had no faith in the Obama administration's EPA," Cornyn said in a news release. "Scott Pruitt will bring a common-sense approach by helping to rein in the past administration's overreach."

Even though Pruitt's backers have said he's unlikely to just turn EPA on its head, the prospect of wholesale changes have roiled many Democrats and environmentalists.

Some critics have spoken of the Trump White House's approach to climate change in apocalyptic terms. Democrats sought desperately to delay Pruitt's confirmation so they could peek at a trove of soon-to-be-released public records that could spotlight his ties to the oil and gas industry.

And some opponents have cast Pruitt as callous -- saying, for example, that he would have no concern for children who might develop asthma as a result of air pollution.

Dallas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Democrat, said Scott Pruitt is "unfit to be the leader of EPA." (Ashley Landis/Staff Photographer)

"Mr. Pruitt is unfit to be the leader of EPA, the agency charged with protecting public health and the environment — and the very agency he has spent his career opposing," said Dallas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, the top Democrat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.

With Pruitt finally confirmed, some observers are predicting a showdown between Trump's political appointees and the EPA's career staff.

The New York Times this week reported that EPA employees had been calling senators to ask them to oppose Pruitt. One expert on presidential administrations told The Times that he couldn't "think of any other time when people in the bureaucracy have done this."

Civil service rules offer federal workers rather robust protections, but some experts nonetheless predicted turmoil.

"What it means is that it's going to be a blood bath when Pruitt gets in there," Christine Todd Whitman, EPA administration under George W. Bush, told The Times.