Scandal-plagued EPA administrator Scott Pruitt resigns. An anonymous official tells The Hill that internal EPA documents revealed by the Sierra Club's Freedom of Information Act requests were the "silver bullet" that doomed him. Among their revelations: Pruitt tried to get an agency job for a friend of his landlord's; he spent more than $288,000 on security-related items including "tactical pants"; he asked his security detail to pick up his dry cleaning and to drive him to Ritz-Carlton hotels in search of his favorite moisturizing lotion; and he asked aides to procure a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel in D.C., to get him tickets to the sold-out Rose Bowl, and to arrange a meeting with the CEO of Chick-fil-A to discuss a possible franchise for his wife.

The EPA's own data indicates that the Trump administration's environmental rollbacks will cost 80,000 lives per decade.

The Sierra Club and Friends of the Chicago River sue the Trump International Hotel and Tower for violating the Clean Water Act.

An Interior Department official meets with mining industry officials six times before ending a study on the health effects of mountaintop-removal mining on nearby communities.

President Trump orders the Department of Energy to take "immediate steps" to stop coal-fired and nuclear power plants from closing.

The Trump administration wants to allow hunters on national preserves in Alaska to lure bears with bait, shoot swimming caribou from motorboats, and kill bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens.

The EPA grants a financial hardship waiver to an oil refinery owned by billionaire investor and Trump adviser Carl Icahn. 

 

Trump Watch is funded by the Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program.

This article appeared in the September/October 2018 edition with the headline "Trump Watch: Pruitt Booted."