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)
After scrutiny over the negative impact on the mental health of children, social media apps have begun adding stricter limitations to parental controls. Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization focusing on recommendations for entertainment platforms, joined Cheddar News to talk about the changes, why they might not be enough, and what parents can do to help. "It's almost that the companies — whether they're Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, or whatever — have to start the process from the beginning of designing the product," he said. "They have to be much more clear about age verification so that a 12-year-old and 11-year-old can't get on there." Steyer also pushed for federal legislation to reign in the issue.
As Big Tech companies from the U.S. like Google and Apple managed to build market dominance overseas, the European Union has decided to curb what it sees as monopolistic growth. Greg Martin, the co-founder of Rainmaker Securities, joined Cheddar News to talk about how the impact of the antitrust regulations being adopted. "I think there's a lot of great outcomes here, but those will be far down the road [because] I do think there's some interoperability things that need to be worked out technologically," he said. "But it's going to be really good ultimately for the consumer in my opinion."
Tenicka Boyd is a digital creator making content that reflects her two passions: activism and style. The TikTok star joined Cheddar News to talk about her platform and new looks this Spring. Boyd admitted that at first she wanted to remain anonymous on the social media platform before finding her passion. "I just joined TikTok hoping that no one would find me, and I started creating colorful content," she said. "I didn't know that you could monetize this and really do it full time, and I just followed my passion because I realized that you can have multiple different lives and do multiple different things."
Catching you up on what you need to know on March 25, 2022, with Ukrainian forces retaking Kyiv, 300 deaths reported from the bombing of a theater used as a shelter in Mariupol, U.S. regulators ditch a climate review of natural gas projects, the 94th Academy Awards, and more.
North Korea says it test-fired its biggest intercontinental ballistic missile under the orders of leader Kim Jong Un, who vowed to continue expanding his nuclear arsenal while preparing for a “long-standing confrontation” with the United States.
Ukrainian authorities in the besieged ruins of Mariupol say that about 300 people died when a Russian airstrike blew up a theater where hundreds of civilians were sheltering.
Survivors of the Parkland School Shooting along with activists from March For Our Lives set up on the National Mall on Thursday. Their demonstration displayed 1,100 bodybags that spelled out the phrase “Thoughts and Prayers” to remind lawmakers that condolences are not enough and to push for action on guns. Each bag represented 150 lives lost due to gun violence. Trevon Bosley, a board member of March For Our Lives, joined Cheddar News to discuss the organization's return to Washington, DC. "The main thing bringing us back is that we have not seen anything being done on the national level for gun violence.” Bosley said. “We’re not seeing anything changed, and we’re not seeing lives being saved”
UK's prince William and his wife were met by protesters during their visit to Jamaica. Cheddar News speaks with political strategist Dee Dawkins-Haigler, who explains why the country's path to independence is relevant to Americans.
