Senate Confirms Four Trump Nominees to Top Environmental Posts in Last-Minute Vote
The Senate voted to confirm at least four of President Donald Trump‘s nominees to top environmental posts Thursday in last-minute votes just hours before the 115th Congress adjourned.
The confirmations, which received mixed reactions from environmentalists, fill long-vacant roles and save the White House from having to restart the nomination process with a newly sworn-in 116th Congress.
The nominees, among more than 60 administration officials confirmed in the eleventh-hour voice vote, include those picked for executive posts at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Council on Environmental Quality.
At the EPA, Alexandra Dunn was confirmed to lead the agency’s chemical office. Dunn previously served as the EPA administrator for Region 1 in Boston. She won praise overseeing the New England region as an “apolitical” bureaucrat who the Boston Globe described in an August profile as gaining “respect for protecting the environment.”
The position of assistant administrator of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention was left open since 2017, when former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt nominated Michael Dourson, whose consultancy InsideClimate News described in 2014 as the “one-stop science shop” favored by the chemical and tobacco industries. Dourson dropped out as Republican support for his nomination waned.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/01/senate-confirms-4-trump-nominees-to-top-environmental-posts-in-last-minute-vote/
