Feb 25, 2017

Trump's EPA transition head troubled by signs of moderation

Myron Ebell, who led Trump's EPA transition team and wrote the action plan for the environmental agency, was troubled to read in the Wall Street Journal about the moderating influence of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump over the Trump Administration's environmental policies.

They appear to have forgotten who voted for Trump and why. — Ebell in an e-mail when we asked him what he thought about the WSJ story

Why this matters: Ebell no longer works for Trump but his perspective reflects the views of environmental hardliners within the president's orbit. His passionate response to the WSJ story — which says Kushner intervened in an executive order drafting to scrap language critical of the 2015 global climate deal — telegraphs inevitable tensions between the White House's moderating influences (Jared and Ivanka) and those who want to gut the regulatory state using the sharpest knife in the drawer.

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Coronavirus dashboard

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Global: Total confirmed cases as of 3 a.m. ET: 1,484,811 — Total deaths: 88,538 — Total recoveries: 329,876 — Map.
U.S.: Total confirmed cases as of 3 a.m. ET: 432,132 — Total deaths: 14,817 — Total recoveries: 23,906 — Map.
Federal government latest: Top Trump administration officials had been developing a plan to give cloth masks to huge numbers of Americans, but the idea lost traction amid heavy internal skepticism.
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Business: One-third of U.S. jobs are at risk of disappearing, mostly affecting low-income workers.
World: WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged countries to put politics aside "if you don’t want to have many more body bags.”
Environment: COVID-19 is underscoring the connection between air pollution and dire outcomes from respiratory diseases.
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