While everyone is focused on President Trump’s porn star escapades, EPA head Scott Pruitt is hard at work dismantling the health of the environment and human beings. Pruitt has built himself a secure little fortress, complete with a biometric door lock on his office, a soundproof communications booth with two-foot thick concrete and of course a seat in the first class cabin because it is away from those pesky American citizens who he finds so threatening.
If only the worst problem with the secretary of our Environmental Protection Agency was his fetish for secrecy. Unfortunately, he has been trashing rules that are designed to protect the health of our nation. That Clean Power Plan the Trump administration wants to fully repeal? The EPA’s own studies have said it would have prevented 4,500 premature deaths each year, not to mention 93,000 pediatric asthma attacks.
In his first year as EPA administrator, Pruitt has begun to dismantle dozens of major environmental rules, all while the Trump crew tried to slash the agency’s funding by over 30 percent (Congress said no to the huge proposed cut during the latest budget battle). One of the biggest threats to the EPA safeguarding the environment — and the work of dedicated scientists — is a plan to disallow any research that hinges on confidential (or “secret”) data like medical records. It just so happens studies looking at the effects of air particulates, toxins and chemicals are based on this very kind of underlying data.
Never mind, a lawyer whose Tulsa, Okalahoma business was called “Christian Legal Services” now gets to decide what is valid science and what is not.