The advisers hope to make a recommendation to President Donald Trump, who is expected to issue a final verdict on the pact by late May. | Getty White House advisers postpone Paris climate deal meeting

President Donald Trump's most senior advisers postponed a meeting Tuesday during which they had hoped to bridge the administration's divide over whether the U.S. should remain in the Paris climate change agreement.

The fate of the agreement, backed by nearly 200 nations in 2015, has become a major symbolic policy question for a president who has dismissed human-caused climate change as a hoax and promised to revive the U.S. coal industry. The agreement also stands as one of former President Barack Obama's most significant accomplishments on combating global warming.


A White House aide said the meeting was being rescheduled because several Trump advisers were traveling with the president to Wisconsin on Tuesday. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters that the meeting will be rescheduled in the "couple of weeks."

Sanders said the meeting was not canceled as a result of discord over the Paris deal among Trump's advisers.

But several of Trump's most senior advisers are deeply divided on whether the United States should stay in the agreement, despite broad consensus in the administration for rolling back the Obama administration regulations aimed at achieving sharp reductions in U.S. greenhouse gas output.

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Chief White House strategist Steve Bannon and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt have called for the U.S. to withdraw from the agreement, while other Trump advisers such as his senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner are said to support staying. Other advisers who had been expected to attend Tuesday's meeting included National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, administration officials told POLITICO last week.

The advisers hope to make a recommendation to the president, who is expected to issue a final verdict on the pact by late May.

Administration officials who want to stick with the Paris deal have argued behind the scenes that the agreement is not legally binding and will not hobble Pruitt's effort to undo Obama’s climate rules. Some aides have also argued that remaining in the pact will give the U.S. leverage to win greater support for technology to reduce pollution from the use of coal and other fossil fuels.

But opponents of the Paris agreement are still amping up their calls for Trump to withdraw from the accord, including 12 House Republicans who made their plea in a letter to the president Tuesday.

"As you contemplate the United States' continued involvement in the Paris Climate Agreement, we would like to express our support for a complete withdrawal from the deal," wrote the lawmakers, led by David McKinley of West Virginia and Paul Gosar of Arizona.

Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who has Trump's ear on energy policy, has been circulating a letter supporting staying in the Paris agreement with a much-reduced carbon commitment. But he has not yet sent it or divulged how many lawmakers are joining him on it.

Eric Wolff contributed to this report.