EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Resigns After String of Scandals
*By Alisha Haridasani*
Scott Pruitt, the embattled chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, resigned Thursday afternoon, following months of scandals about his spending practices and a trail of questions about possible ethical violations.
“I have accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt,” President Trump tweeted on Thursday. “Within the Agency Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this.”
In remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One Thursday, Trump said the decision to resign was Pruitt's alone. "He felt that he did not want to be a distraction for an administration that he has a lot of faith in," Trump said.
Pruitt’s deputy, Andrew Wheeler, will be the new acting chief of the EPA, who the president described as "a very environmental person."
Pruitt’s deputy, Andrew Wheeler, will be the new acting chief of the EPA, the president said.
In the resignation letter that Pruitt sent to President Trump, he said "it is extremely difficult for me to cease serving you in this role."
But he then said, "the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll on all of us."
Pruitt has been accused of a [seemingly unending list](https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/06/politics/scott-pruitt-controversies-list/index.html) of offenses, including misusing taxpayer money to fly home on a private jet, enlisting his aides to help his wife find a job or find a particular moisturizer, renting out a condo ー at a discount ー from a health care lobbyist, and installing a $43,000 sound-proof phone booth in his office.
Despite his scandal-ridden tenure, his resignation came as a surprise to many in Washington because just a day prior to the announcement, Pruitt celebrated the July 4th holiday at the White House.
Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general, made a name for himself by suing the very agency he would end up leading, urging the EPA to roll back regulations. That stance, which pleased many Republicans, is the reason he managed to cling on to his job for over a year despite the scandals, said Phil Wegmann, writer at the Washington Examiner.
"He was doing a good job of deregulation, of beating back a lot of the policies of the Obama administration had put in place," he said.
"If you filter out all of the personal scandals, he's not doing a bad job in the eyes of this administration."
But the fact that the ethical scandals eventually caught up to him signals that there is a limit to how much conservatives were willing to ignore, said Wegmann.
"Eventually it was just too much and he got the boot."
His replacement, a former coal lobbyist who is likely to pursue the same regulatory rollback agenda as Pruitt, may not clean up the EPA's act and instead might find himself involved with "corporate cronyism," said Wegmann.
"This is like replacing the fox in the hen house with a wolf in the hen house."
For the full segment, [click here.](https://cheddar.com/videos/epa-chief-scott-pruitt-resigns)
Krutika Amin, associate director at the Kaiser Family Foundation for the Program on the Affordable Care Act, joins Cheddar Politics to discuss the Biden administration's plan to fix the so-called 'family glitch' in the Affordable Care Act preventing millions of Americans from accessing government-subsidized health plan.
Abdallah Fayyad, opinion writer at the Boston Globe, joins Cheddar Politics to discuss the House's vote to hold former Trump aides Dan Scavino and Peter Navarro in contempt of Congress and send the recommendation to the Department of Justice. Fayyad also weighs in on the pressure facing Attorney General Merrick Garland to be more aggressive in prosecuting the January 6 case.
Those paying back federal student loans are getting a few extra months of relief. President Biden just announced another extension of the pandemic relief program allowing millions of borrowers to freeze their student loan payments. The pause began in March 2020 and it has been extended six times. Tomas Campos, co-founder and CEO of Spinwheel, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
There has been notable disagreement in the medical community about a fourth COVID-19 vaccine dose. The FDA last week authorized a second booster dose for older and immunocompromised individuals, as some agency officials did not support the idea. The FDA made the decision without meeting with its advisory committee, as it had ahead of its recommendations on the previous COVID-19 vaccine doses.
The CDC followed in the footsteps of the FDA and authorized a fourth dose as well. Reports say the agency also did not discuss the move with its own advisory team of vaccine experts. Now, a growing number of doctors are speaking out against the decisions - leaving people confused about whether they should get another vaccine dose. Dr. Julie Morita, a member of the CDC's advisory committee to the director, and the executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
The Senate has confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, shattering a historic barrier by securing her place as the first Black female justice and giving President Joe Biden a bipartisan endorsement for his effort to diversify the court
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tested positive for COVID-19, her spokesman says. That's a day after the 82-year-old Democratic leader appeared unmasked at a White House event with President Joe Biden.
JetBlue made an unsolicited offer to buy low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines, potentially jeopardizing the original offer from Frontier Airlines. Several analysts sounding the alarm on JetBlue's proposed $3.6 billion merger, saying the deal doesn't quite make sense. Jim Corridore, Senior Insights Manager at Similarweb joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss.
The Biden administration is once again extending the pause on federal student loans payments — this time, through the end of August. In a statement, President Biden cited a recent analysis from the Fed that if the payments were to resume, millions of student loan borrowers would face significant "economic hardship, delinquencies, and defaults that could threaten America's financial stability." Sarah Foster, an analyst at Bankrate, breaks down the impact of the extension on borrowers, the economy, and the future of student loan forgiveness. "I think this is just an instance of the federal student loan forbearance program kind of creating additional uncertainty for borrowers, especially in the sense that these past four extensions from the Biden administration have kind of come at the 11th hour here," she said.
