Who is Andrew Wheeler and why you should be afraid of him.
With Scott Pruitt's resignation, Andrew Wheeler will be the acting director of the EPA. And by pointing out that he is Senate-confirmed, is DT telegraphing that he might eventually fire Sessions and replace him with Wheeler? (Who would then fire Mueller?)
https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/who-andrew-wheeler-and-why-you-should-be-afraid-him
Scott Pruitts long record of misdeeds and malfeasance finally seems to have caught up with him. Whether his numerous scandals, recently making headlines, will cost him his job as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is still an open question. President Trump has been tweeting his support of his EPA administrator, doing whatever he can to dispel growing rumors of an imminent firing or an abrupt resignation. But given the drip-drip-drip of near-daily revelations, its safe to assume that news editors already have their Pruitt postmortems written, copyedited, and ready to publish at a moments notice. In this administration, a statement of support from the White House shouldnt be taken as a sign that ones job is safe. (Indeed, its often an ominous prelude to termination. Just ask H. R. McMaster or Rex Tillerson.)
Meanwhile, theres another big EPA story thats deserving of our attention but getting far less of it. Yesterday a slim majority of senators approved Andrew Wheeler to be the EPAs deputy administrator―the person who could end up running the agency should the current administrator suddenly decide (as so, so many Washingtonians before him have decided) that he really wants to spend more time with his family.
If youre hoping Wheeler could represent some sort of departure from Pruitts (literal) scorched-earth agenda, he wouldnt. While it may be impossible to imagine anyone worse than Pruitt to lead our nations environmental policy, plenty of individuals could be just as bad. And as hes shown us on numerous occasions, President Trump has a sixth sense for ferreting these people out and putting them on the executive-branch payroll.
So who is Andrew Wheeler? And what is it about his particular career trajectory that makes the White House, energy-company executives, and assorted climate deniers think hes a perfect fit for the Trump-era EPA?
SNIP