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Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt picked as next EPA chief
Nomination of EPA critic to head agency is drawing fire from environmental groups
♦By Rich Shumate, Chicken Fried Politics.com editor
WASHINGTON (CFP) — Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a vocal critic of the federal Environmental Protection Agency and a skeptic of climate change science, has been picked by President-elect Donald Trump to be the EPA’s next administrator.
Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt
Pruitt’s nomination to the post was announced December 8 by Trump, who, like Pruitt, has been critical of EPA regulations on the energy industry designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
“For too long, the Environmental Protection Agency has spent taxpayer dollars on an out-of-control anti-energy agenda that has destroyed millions of jobs, while also undermining our incredible farmers and many other businesses and industries at every turn,” Trump said in a statement announcing Pruitt’s selection.
“(Pruitt) will reverse this trend and restore the EPA’s essential mission of keeping our air and our water clean and safe.”
Pruitt, who has both sued and been publicly critical of the agency, said in his own statement that “the American people are tired of seeing billions of dollars drained from our economy due to unnecessary EPA regulations.”
“I intend to run this agency in a way that fosters both responsible protection of the environment and freedom for American businesses,” he said.
But Pruitt’s nomination has already run into fierce opposition from environmental groups.
Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement that putting Pruitt in charge of the EPA “is like putting an arsonist in charge of fighting fires.”
Kassie Siegal, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, dismissed Pruitt as “a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil industry,” pointing to political contributions he has received from Oklahoma oil interests.
“Nominating him to lead the agency that protects our air, water and climate from pollution is like putting the Swamp Thing in charge of draining the swamp,” she said in a statement. “Any senator who doesn’t fight this nomination is handing corporate polluters a wrecking ball to destroy our future.”
Pruitt, 48, is in his second term as attorney general. His criticism of the EPA largely stems from the agency’s imposition of new restrictions on coal-fired power plants in order to curb carbon dioxide emissions, which proponents of climate change believe are harming the planet.
Pruitt, who has called the science behind the theory of climate change “unsettled,” sued the EPA after it rejected a plan put forward by the state to control power plant emissions in Oklahoma. He has also accused the EPA of overestimating the amount of air pollution caused by natural gas producers.
At a congressional hearing in 2015, Pruitt charged that the EPA was trying to force an “anti-fossil fuel agenda” on the states.
Trump, too, has been critical of the science behind climate change, once describing it as a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese. However, in an interview after he won the November 8 election, he partially walked back that statement, saying there might be a link between human activity and changes in global temperature.
Second Texas GOP elector bolts from Donald Trump
Elector Chris Suprun says Trump is not qualified to be president
♦By Rich Shumate, Chicken Fried Politics.com editor
DALLAS (CFP) — A Texas Republican presidential elector has announced he won’t vote for Donald Trump, making his case in a New York Times op-ed in which he argues the president-elect “shows daily he is not qualified for the office.”
Chris Suprin (Photo: Twitter)
“The election of the next president is not yet a done deal,” said Chris Suprun, a paramedic from Dallas. “Electors of conscience can still do the right thing for the good of the county. Presidential electors have the legal right and a constitutional duty to vote their conscience.”
Suprun said that while he has “poured countless hours into serving the party of Lincoln and electing its candidates,” Trump is an divisive demagogue who lacks foreign policy experience and has overseas business interests that would conflict with his role as president.
“I owe no debt to a party,” he said. “I owe a debt to my children to leave them a nation they can trust.”
Suprun did not say who would get his vote when Texas’s 38 electors meet to cast their ballots in Austin on December 19. However, he called on electors to “unify behind a Republican alternative, an honorable and qualified man or woman such as Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.”
Under Texas law, electors are not bound to vote for the candidate who carried the state in the November 8 election. However, the Texas Republican Party required all electors to take an oath pledging to vote for the winner.
Suprun was selected as the elector representing the 30th U.S. House District, a majority-minority area that includes much of the city of Dallas and southern Dallas County. While Trump carried the state, Hillary Clinton won Suprun’s district.
Suprun is the second Texas elector to refuse to vote for Trump, following Art Sisneros, who resigned as an elector rather than cast a ballot for the president-elect, which he said “would bring dishonor to God.
Sisneros will be replaced by the remaining electors when they meet on December 19.
Georgia U.S. Rep. Tom Price nominated to Cabinet post overseeing Obamacare
Price is Donald Trump’s pick to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services
♦By Rich Shumate, Chicken Fried Politics.com editor
WASHINGTON (CFP) — U.S. Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, who has led the charge in Congress to repeal Obamacare, has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to head the department that oversees the nation’s health care system.
U.S. Rep. Tom Price
Price, 62, an orthopedic surgeon from Roswell in the Atlanta suburbs, is Trump’s pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, a post that took on vast new powers under the Affordable Care Act passed in 2009.
“I am humbled by the incredible challenges that lay ahead and enthusiastic for the opportunity to be a part of solving them on behalf of the American people,” Price said in a statement announcing the appointment.
“There is much work to be done to ensure we have a health care system that works for patients, families, and doctors; that leads the world in the cure and prevention of illness; and that is based on sensible rules to protect the well-being of the country while embracing its innovative spirit.”
In his own statement, Trump said Price “has earned a reputation for being a tireless problem solver and the go-to expert on healthcare policy, making him the ideal choice to serve in this capacity.”
“He is exceptionally qualified to shepherd our commitment to repeal and replace Obamacare and bring affordable and accessible healthcare to every American.”
Price, chairman of the House Budget Committee, was one of nine Republican chairman to jointly endorse Trump in early May, just before he had secured the party’s presidential nomination.
During the campaign, Trump vowed to repeal and replace Obamacare, something Republicans have tried to do repeatedly while President Obama was in office. Price has been among the leaders of that repeal effort in the House.
The HHS secretary is responsible for overseeing key parts of the Obamacare machinery, including the exchanges that offer subsidized insurance coverage to lower-income Americans and the Medicaid program that allows states to cover the medical costs of the poor.
Price was elected to the U.S. House in 2004, representing Georgia’s heavily Republican 6th District, which takes in upscale suburbs north of the city of Atlanta.
If he is confirmed to the HHS post, a special election will be held to pick his replacement in the House. Given the political leanings of the district, the seat is almost certain to remain in Republican hands.
Texas GOP presidential elector resigns, says voting for Trump would “bring dishonor to God”
Elector Art Sisneros will be replaced when Lone Star electors meet on December 19
♦By Rich Shumate, Chicken Fried Politics.com editor
HOUSTON (CFP) — A Christian conservative presidential elector in Texas has resigned rather than cast a vote for Donald Trump, dismissing the New York real estate mogul as not “biblically qualified” to be president.
Former Texas elector Art Sisneros (Courtesy Art Sisneros via Texas Monthly)
In a November 26 post on his personal blog announcing his resignation, Art Sisneros said he could neither vote for Trump nor break a pledge he made to the Texas Republican Party to support the winner of the November 8 election.
“If Trump is not qualified and my role, both morally and historically, as an elected official is to vote my conscience, then I cannot and will not vote for Donald Trump for president. I believe voting for Trump would bring dishonor to God,” Sisneros said.
Under state law, the rest of Texas’s electors will select a replacement for Sisneros when they convene in Austin on December 19 to cast their votes for president and vice president.
Sisneros said he had received “hundreds of angry messages” after commenting publicly about his reluctance to vote for Trump, but none of them convinced him to change his mind.
“The people will get their vote. They will get their Skittles for dinner,” he said. “I will sleep well at night knowing I neither gave in to their demands nor caved to my convictions. I will also mourn the loss of our republic.”
Sisneros was picked as one of the Lone Star State’s 38 presidential electors at the state GOP convention in May, about two weeks before Trump won enough delegates to clinch the party’s nomination.
Texas was one of just two Southern states that Trump failed to carry during the primary season, losing to the state’s junior U.S. senator, Ted Cruz.
In the general election, Trump won 52 percent of the vote in Texas and carried 227 of the state’s 254 counties. However, state law does not bind electors to vote for the candidate who won most votes, although the Texas Republican Party requires electors to sign a pledge to do so.
Sisneros said he resigned rather than violate that pledge by voting for someone other than Trump.
“I have sinned in signing that pledge,” Sisneros said in his post. “I humbly confess that it was wrong for me to do so. I am grateful for the forgiveness I have in Christ for all my foolishness.”
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley to be U.N. ambassador
Haley will be replaced in Columbia by Lieutenant Governor Henry McMaster
♦By Rich Shumate, Chicken Fried Politics.com editor
WASHINGTON (CFP) — South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, despite her earlier criticism of him and endorsements of two of his Republican rivals.
If Haley is confirmed, Republican Lieutenant Governor Henry McMaster will take over the Palmetto State’s governorship until a new governor is elected in 2018, keeping the seat in GOP hands.
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley
Although Haley has little foreign policy experience, Trump, in a statement announcing her nomination, said she “has a proven track record of bringing people together regardless of background or party affiliation to move critical policies forward for the betterment of her state and our country.”
“She is also a proven deal maker, and we look to be making plenty of deals,” Trump said.
Haley, 44, the daughter of Sikh immigrants from India, is in her second term, having been elected in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. She is the first woman ever elected as governor in South Carolina.
In a statement, she said the decision to leave the governorhsihp was “difficult” but that she accepted the U.N. ambassadorship out of “a sense of duty.”
“When the president believes you have a major contribution to make to the welfare of our nation, and to our nation’s standing in the world, that is a calling that is important to heed,” she said.
Haley is best known nationally for her handling of the aftermath of a shooting at an African-American church in Charleston in 2015 that left nine people dead. Amid national attention to racial tension in her state, Haley persuaded state legislators to remove the Confederate battle flag from the top of the State House in Columbia.
Haley’s decision to take a spot in the Trump administration marks a turn away from her previously frosty relationship with the incoming president; less than a month ago she called him “irresponsible” for suggesting that the election would be rigged.
Last January, as the presidential race was heating up, Haley delivered the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address and gave what was seen at the time as a thinly veiled shot at Trump: “During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation.”
Then, just before the South Carolina presidential primary in February, Haley endorsed one of Trump’s GOP rivals, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. When Rubio dropped out in March, she then endorsed U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Trump responded with a blast on Twitter in which he called her an embarrassment to the people of her state.
Haley never explicitly endorsed Trump during the campaign, although she did tell reporters at the Republican National Convention in July that she intended to vote for her party’s nominee.
Lieutenant Governor Henry McMaster
McMaster, 69, served as the U.S. attorney in South Carolina from 1981 to 1985 and as state attorney general from 2003 to 2011. After an unsuccessful run for governor against Haley in 2010, he returned to statewide office by being elected lieutenant governor in 2014.
Unlike Haley, McMaster was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Trump, delivering one of his nominating speeches at the convention. After Trump won, he told the Associated Press that he had been contacted by Trump’s transition team as a possible pick for attorney general, a post which eventually went to U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama.
McMaster had been expected to run for governor in 2018 to succeed the term-limited Haley. His ascension to the governorship is likely to give him a significant advantage over any GOP rivals.
Under South Carolina’s Constitution, McMaster’s post of lieutenant governor would normally be filled by the state Senate’s president pro tempore, Senator Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence. However, when the lieutenant governorship became open after a resignation in 2014, Leatherman and the rest of the Republicans in the Senate refused to take the job, which has limited powers, and it eventually went to Democrat Yancy McGill.
McGill subsequently switched parties and has announced plans to run for governor in 2018 as a Republican.
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