Two Trump scallywags, Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke are trying to make a reappearance into the federal government. For example, the last time they were there, Donald Trump appointed them to be administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior, respectively.
They were scorned and investigated while they tried to upend the government departments they headed. They were forced to resign their posts in less than two-years on the job . Now they are trying to make a reappearance in Washington.
Thomas O. McGarity, in an article (The Nation) reports that these two grifters (grifters is the term McGarity uses to describe the duo), are seeking federal elected office in Oklahoma and Montana. Pruitt is running in the Republican primary for the position left vacant by the retirement of Senator James Inhofe, one of the leading science deniers in the United States Senate. Zinke is capitalizing on Montana’s population growth resulting in an additional Representative in the House. Meanwhile, the Montana Republican election primary has not been called, but at last count Zinke had 41.4%, Al Olszewski, 39.9% and Mary Todd, 10.4%.
The Trump Files
The following sections are excerpts from The Trump Files, my forthcoming book in July 2022. In one part of my book, I wrote about the Trump administration’s effect on science.
I wrote that:
Donald Trump’s administration damaged science. During Trump’s presidency, the EPA rolled back more than one hundred environmental regulations. The health of the nation was put in a crisis with hundreds of thousands of Americans dying of COVID-19. Extreme weather events were met with ignorance and mockery for the people affected. And most alarming was Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, furthering the isolationist mentality of the president and the people who support him. Furthermore, conspiracy theories replaced scientific theories and evidence-based thinking, leading to a colossal assault on truth.
Jack Hassard, The Trump Files: An Account of The Trump administration’s effect on american democracy, human Rights, science and public health. Northington-Hearn Publishing, Marietta
Scallywags
Here are very brief overviews of scallywags Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke. Above all, scientific research was attacked within the federal government. These two directed much of these attacks.
Scott Pruitt
Scott Pruitt was Trump’s choice to be the administrator of the EPA. Pruitt is a lawyer, former lobbyist, and the former attorney general of Oklahoma. He was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 52–46. When he was Oklahoma’s attorney general, he sued the EPA at least fourteen times, and in that role, he opposed abortion, same-sex marriage, the Affordable Care Act, and environmental regulations. He received $250,000 from the fossil fuel industry during his campaign in Oklahoma, even though he ran unopposed.
Pruitt and his successor, Andrew Wheeler, were critiqued by a group of former EPA employees in a report they published in 2020. The report was published as a website called Save EPA. When Biden and Harris came into office in January, the need to save the EPA lessened, and so the group went back into retirement, but it has kept the website open as a resource.
Pruitt was not well received by scientists (I know that is an understatement) in the EPA, and within a year he had more than fourteen separate investigations into his spending habits,253 conflicts of interest, extreme secrecy, and management practices. He even built a $43,000 soundproof telephone booth in his office, which violated spending laws. He set the EPA on a course to roll back rules designed to protect the nation’s environment. Although Congress passes the laws, it is accepted that individual agencies, like the EPA, determine specific actions and rules that must be taken to ensure that the laws are followed. Pruitt did more harm to the EPA than any previous administrator. Finally he resigned on July 5, 2018.
Ryan Zinke
I watched on television as Ryan Zinke rode his horse, Tonto, along the streets of Washington, DC, to his office on C Street. Then he instructed an employee to raise a flag on top of the Department of the Interior’s building as a sign that he was in. This was to be done whenever he sat at his desk. He also set up an arcade game for employees called “Big Buck Hunter,” which had plastic rifles that players aim at animated deer. This, said Zinke, was a way of highlighting sportsmen’s contribution to conservation. The unfortunate horse took an arrogant man to the Department of the Interior.
Zinke was appointed secretary of the interior in 2017 and served until January 2019. During that time, he opened large areas off both coasts to offshore drilling. He also overturned a moratorium on new leases for coal mines on public lands. He recommended reducing the areas of several national monuments, including Bears Ears and Gold Butte. Zinke also moved to scrap Obama-era fracking rules. He was under investigation by the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General for ethical and financial irregularities, and he resigned soon after the investigation was launched. Zinke was replaced by David Bernhardt, an oil and fossil fuel lobbyist and Washington insider.
Attacks on Science
Pruitt and Zinke headed departments in the U.S. government that led to hundreds of attacks on the nature of science carried out at the federal level. Namely, they led personal attacks on individual scientists and the work environment in which science is carried out. The EPA and Department of the Interior were not the only departments effected by Trump’s offensive. Attacks were spread far and wide.
The chart below outlines the nature and examples of the attacks carried out in government science from 2017 – 2021.
| Type of Attack | Number of Attacks | Examples of How Science Was Attacked |
| Anti-science rules/regulations/ orders | 46 | White House posts climate science denialist misinformation. EPA suspends air pollution rules during the pandemic. CDC scientists are sidelined in decision to seal the US border. |
| Censorship | 32 | White House installs political operatives at the CDC. Email showing attempted manipulation of CDC COVID-19 study is buried. CDC scientists are pressured to downplay the risks of schools reopening during the pandemic. |
| Politicization of grants | 12 | Trump political appointees interfere in scientific grants process. Trump administration illegally withholds funding from key energy |
| Type of Attack | Number of Attacks | Examples of How Science Was Attacked |
| Restrictions on conference attendance | 6 | Department of Energy scientists are barred from attending the nuclear power conference. CDC cancels the climate change conference. USGS scientists are required to justify attendance at scientific conferences. |
| Rolling back data collection or data accessibility | 16 | OSHA fails to record COVID-19 cases for all employees. Trump administration takes away hospitalization data from the CDC. EPA blocks NASA from monitoring air pollution after Hurricane Harvey. |
| Sidelining science advisory committees | 10 | US Navy quietly shuts down its task force on climate change. Trump rids federal agencies of scientific expertise. Arms control panel is dismissed. |
| Studies halted, edited, or suppressed | 49 | Trump administration prevents the publication of climate research. Administration undermines scientific report on endangered species in California. White House blocks FDA’s vaccine guidance document. |
Table 1. Examples of the types of attacks on science by the Trump administration as reported by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Accountability
The intrusion of Pruitt and Zinke into politics in 2022 is the result of a lack of accountability for elected or appointed officials. In this case, Pruitt and Zinke are two politicians who have accumulated notable quantities of investigations of their behavior on the job in Washington.
Scott Pruitt was not the champion of ethics violations during the Trump Era, but he certainly deserves a mention. Lisa Friedman, who reports on climate and environmental policy, outlines the major investigations into Pruitt’s unethical behavior at the EPA. Everyone seemed to go after this guy. The inspector general’s office and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee were two of them. The fact that he could become a U.S Senator is abhorrent.
Zinke has amassed 18 federal investigations according to an article by Caroline Zhang at CREW (Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington). She indicates that Zinke was cleared in a few of the cases of wrongdoing. But she points out that lack of cooperation and poor record keeping led to many charges being dismissed. Again, here is another man who should not be serving at one of the highest levels of government.
There are many other scallywags that are running for office around the country. You might check your local and state election leader boards and see if there are any scallywags in your neck of the woods. I know there are a bunch in Georgia.
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