Career officials in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the State Department will try to undermine President Trump’s plan for a U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., warned on Thursday.
“But they will go along with [the withdrawal] because they’ll have to,” the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee told Newsmax.
Inhofe, long considered the most outspoken opponent of climate change in Congress, spoke to us shortly before the president made his announcement that the U.S. would exit from the controversial pact dealing with climate change. Inhofe was confident that Trump and his team would overcome any opposition to their move on the Paris accord from career government officials.
“I have talked to him about [Paris] before he was elected and after,” Inhofe said of Trump. “He understands the issue, and I never doubted he would make the right decision on this.”
The EPA, while headed by Inhofe’s close ally and former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, is, in the senator’s words, “still full of people [at the career level] who are committed to climate change and would undermine the president’s decision.”
As for the State Department’s personnel, the senator told me, “I never have trusted them.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been widely reported to have urged the president to keep the U.S. in the Paris accord.
A good example of where Trump comes from on environmental issues cited by Inhofe has been his use of the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows Congress to overturn federal regulations. Since January, Congress has passed 14 resolutions of disapproval on Obama-era regulations and Trump has signed all of them, including a measure introduced by Inhofe that would overturn regulations on the oil and gas industry.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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