Trump on Earth

For months on end, Pruitt seemed to defy the laws of gravity at the EPA, maintaining his job through more than a dozen scandals. But Pruitt's term has ended after it was reported that President Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly--presumably at the president's behest--asked Pruitt for his resignation.

So the big question is--why now? And, importantly, what happens next?

On this episode Reid Frazier talks with Zack Colman, a reporter with E&E News.

When Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act on December 28, 1973, it made the United States the only nation on Earth to declare a basic right of existence for species other than our own. Currently, the Act protects more than 1,600 species across the country. Now, the landmark legislation is being targeted by industry, with support from the GOP. What happens next could determine the fate of hundreds of endangered species.

On this episode, we talk about the future of the Endangered Species Act with Jennifer Kahn. She wrote an article published in The New York Times magazine earlier this year titled, Should Some Species be Allowed to Die Out?

Earlier this month, Scott Pruitt gave a big gift to the chemical industry in the form of narrowing how the EPA will determine the health risks posed by chemicals. Is it a policy change that could prove deadly?

Before he was EPA administrator, before he was Oklahoma's attorney general, before he was even a state senator, Scott Pruitt was an unknown attorney in the suburbs of Tulsa, Oklahoma. What do Scott Pruitt's early days in public life tell us about his beliefs and motivations as he sets about dismantling EPA regulations?

On this episode, we talk to two reporters who dug into this question to find out more about the man President Donald Trump picked to lead the EPA. Joe Wertz is a reporter for State Impact Oklahoma and Tom Dreisbach is a producer for the NPR podcast Embedded.

From its inception, science has been at the core of the EPA's mission. It's used science about the health effects of industrial pollution to make our air and water cleaner. But EPA administrator Scott Pruitt wants to limit what kinds of research the agency can use when making regulations. To that end, he has introduced the Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science rule. Transparency--sounds pretty good, right? But with this new rule, the agency would limit what kinds of research it can use when making regulations. EPA scientists would no longer be allowed to use studies that don't make their raw data available to the public. That includes most public health studies because these often use confidential patient information that is generally shielded from public view.

On top of that, the rule would exempt certain types of industry-funded science. This has many scientists furious. Nearly 1,000 of them signed a letter calling the proposal a way to run "political interference in science-based decision making."

To learn more about this issue, we turned to someone who ran a big science program at the EPA. Bernard Goldstein was assistant administrator for research and development at the agency during the Reagan administration. He's now a professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health.

First class flights, pricey office furniture, a soundproof booth and a security detail the size of a small police department. And don't forget a rented room inside a condo owned by a lobbyist's wife. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is embroiled in a series of concentric ethics scandals, and it's led to speculation about his future there.

Today we ask how Scott Pruitt got into his current situation, why he still has a job at EPA, and whether the scandals will impede his attempts to dismantle environmental regulations.

Our guests are NPR'S Rebecca Hersher and Jennifer Ludden, and the New Republic's Emily Atkin.

The Trump administration says it wants to open up nearly all of the country's oceans to oil and gas drilling. So what will this mean for communities around the country that depend on our coasts for their livelihood? What will this mean for our oceans?

More than 60 percent of Alaska is owned by the federal government. That's 225 million acres; a plot of land bigger than Texas. So if any state is going to be impacted by environmental decisions made in Washington D.C., it's Alaska. On this episode, we talk about those decisions being made in D.C. and their impacts on the 49th state with two of its experts. Elizabeth Harball is a public radio reporter with Alaska's energy desk in Anchorage, and Liz Ruskin is the D.C. correspondent for Alaska Public Media.

There have been lots of presidential orders and proclamations, and many proposals are in the works. But just how effective has Trump been in changing environmental policy during his first year in office?

To answer that we spoke with Dan Farber, an environmental law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He also blogs about these issues at legal-planet.org.

Rolling back regulations is fundamental to the philosophy of the Trump administration. And a lot of the action has been directed towards environmental regulations. According to a review done by the Washington Post, 63 environmental rules have been targeted across all agencies. That's more than other policy area. So what's the case for environmental regulations? Do they work? Do they make our lives better in any measurable way? We hear a lot from the Trump administration about how regulations are job-killers, but aren't they also life-savers?