Most living former EPA heads joined in Wednesday’s appeal, with Trump’s first EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, being the notable exception. The group — William Reilly, Lee Thomas, Carol Browner, Christine Todd Whitman, Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy — served under Republican and Democratic presidents.

The Environmental Protection Network, a bipartisan group of more than 500 former EPA senior managers and employees, crafted the hundreds of pages of recommendations for a change of course at the agency.

The group said the road map was meant to guide whatever administration the Nov. 3 presidential election puts in place, although many of the proposals are implicitly or explicitly critical of Trump EPA actions. The former EPA heads’ accompanying statement did not mention Trump but said they were “concerned about the current state of affairs at EPA.”

Some of the reset recommendations were aimed at the Trump era, such as minimizing industry and political influence on science-based decisions in regulatory actions, combating climate change and cutting air pollution with electric vehicles, and others. The proposals are in line with critics’ complaints about Trump and with many of Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden’s proposals.

The EPA, now under the leadership of former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, has been an avid agent of Trump’s drive to cut regulations he sees as unnecessarily burdensome to business, including the coal, gas and oil industries. The administration says it is rolling back rules without increasing risk to the public health and environment.

Nationally, many public health officials, environmental groups, Democratic lawmakers, scientists and others disagree, saying Trump’s regulation-cutting, combined with sharp drops in many areas of enforcement against polluters, is increasing air and water pollutants and industrial toxins and jeopardizing the health of Americans.

When it comes to the EPA’s mandate of protecting peoples’ health and the environment, “the last few years, the agency has been derailed from that mission,” Browner, who led the agency in the Clinton administration, said in a statement.

Saying environmental and health protections were essential to economic growth, Browner called the reset recommendations “reaffirmations of our environmental laws, and return to where the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act are respected and enforced and where policy is science-based and aimed at protecting our health and environment.”

The ex-EPA staffers’ recommendations range from broad mandates — like increasing the agency’s actions across the board on the disproportionate exposure that Black, Hispanic and other minority communities and low-income areas have to all kinds of dangerous pollutants — to the specific, like which measures from Trump’s first term to focus on in the first 100 days of a new term. They also urge increased funding.

Specific public health and environmental rollbacks from Trump’s first term targeted for proposed annihilation or rewriting by the ex-EPA employees include a pending Trump regulation-easing measure for climate-damaging methane from oil and gas production that the EPA is expected to announce in the coming days.

Some of the many other Trump EPA measures on the “out” list in the reset proposal: a “transparency” rule supported by industry that limits what public health studies the agency can use in making regulations; a Trump-driven move to ease vehicle mileage and emission standards; and a heavily voluntary plan for cutting fossil fuel emissions by power plants that replaced the Obama administration’s broad plan for making the nation’s power sector more climate friendly.

Another recommendation: Cultivate “a more open and respectful exchange between reporters and EPA.”

Wednesday’s recommendations at times make the job of changing course at the EPA seem formidable. The agency’s air office, for instance, they say, “has a massive to-do list, a huge amount of pressure from outside groups, a demoralized and diminished career staff to tend to, and an incredible sense of urgency.”

Michelle Roos, executive director of the ex-employees group, said more than 100 former EPA staffers prepared the action plan over 10 months. Roos said the changes would “better protect the air we breathe and the water we drink” and do more to confront climate change and the heightened pollutant risks of minority and low-income communities.

Late Friday, Trump informed Congress that he was ousting yet another internal watchdog — the fourth in six weeks. His latest target: Steven Linick of the State Department. The president offered no explanation for the firing, saying only that he no longer had “the fullest confidence” in Linick.

Pressed on his decision Monday, the president insisted that he personally had no problem with Linick. “I never even heard of him,” he told reporters. “But I was asked to by the State Department, by Mike.” Stressing repeatedly that he has the “right to terminate” as many pesky IGs as he wants to — especially those appointed by President Barack Obama — Trump professed ignorance of the details: “You’d have to ask Mike Pompeo.”

Democratic lawmakers, journalists and even some Republicans are now lining up to do just that. Because as it turns out, Pompeo asked the president to ax Linick while the inspector general was in the midst of investigating potential misconduct by … Pompeo.

Some of the secretary’s alleged behavior suggests a pattern of petty swampiness. For instance, he and his wife, Susan, are accused of inappropriately directing a staff assistant to handle domestic chores, including picking up their dry cleaning, booking restaurant reservations and walking the family dog, Sherman.

Similar charges surfaced last summer, when House Democrats were looking into a whistleblower complaint that the Pompeos had misused diplomatic security. According to CNN, the couple would dispatch agents to run personal errands such as picking up their adult son from the train station, retrieving Sherman from the groomer and fetching Chinese takeout — prompting agents to grouse that they were being treated like “UberEats with guns.”

Also last year, Susan Pompeo ruffled feathers in the department by tagging along on her husband’s trip to the Middle East during the government shutdown, running up costs and requiring staff members who were going unpaid because of the shutdown to tend to her. Questions have also arisen about why she has her own security detail, even when not traveling.

Going back further, Pompeo prompted grumbling during her husband’s tenure as director of the CIA. As the honorary head of the Family Advisory Board, she would borrow offices on the seventh floor of the agency’s headquarters, where Pompeo and other top officials work; CIA staff members would assist with her projects.

Using taxpayer funds to make their lives easier or more glamorous has been a continuing issue for Trump administration officials. Remember Tom Price’s love of private planes? David Shulkin’s European sightseeing and tickets to Wimbledon? Pretty much everything Scott Pruitt ever did? At this point, a Trump Cabinet secretary could perhaps be forgiven for assuming that this sort of behavior is the new normal.

But Pompeo’s issues may go deeper. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., has revealed that Linick was also investigating whether the administration unlawfully declared an “emergency” last year that enabled Pompeo to circumvent a congressional ban and approve the resumption of arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Pompeo has denied that Linick’s scrutiny of him played any role in his dismissal. He has claimed, in fact, that he didn’t even know that he was under investigation for misusing staff members.

So far, the secretary has been vague about why he wanted Linick gone — something about how the IG wasn’t “performing a function” that was “additive.” One of Pompeo’s aides, Brian Bulatao, told The Washington Post that there had been concerns about Linick’s office leaking to the media. Bulatao said the secretary also was miffed that Linick had not embraced the new “ethos statement” the department put out last year.

Democratic lawmakers would like a smidgen more clarity. Engel and Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, announced Saturday that they would conduct a joint investigation into the matter.

This scrutiny comes at an inconvenient time for Pompeo. It is among Washington’s worst-kept secrets that he harbors ambitions for higher office. Some people think he plans to run for president in 2024. He had been eyeing this year’s Senate race in his home state, Kansas, and spent a striking amount of time schmoozing with folks back in the state — not exactly a focal point of American foreign policy. In January, he reportedly told the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, that he had decided against running. But with Republicans increasingly anxious about keeping control of the chamber, McConnell has been leaning on Pompeo to jump in.

Whatever Pompeo’s plans for the future, he can look forward to answering uncomfortable questions about how he’s been handling his current job.

Michelle Cottle is a member of The New York Times editorial board.

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Failing oil and coal companies quickly moved to exploit the bailout as a financial lifeline. They had help. Seventeen Republican senators sent a letter in April to the Federal Reserve, effectively urging the use of coronavirus rescue funds to bail out bad coal and oil debt.

In a separate letter to President Donald Trump, a group of three dozen senators and representatives argued that banks should be punished for “discriminating against America’s energy sector” by denying financing to sinking fossil fuel companies. Conservatives have long demanded that the market should decide such matters. But the oil patch plays by different political rules.

Funneling taxpayer funds to failing companies in a declining industry that wreaks trillions of dollars in damage on the environment is not an easily justified investment. Yet the Federal Reserve, which sets loan guidelines for some of the rescue package, changed the rules of its “Main Street” lending program to allow companies to use taxpayer loans to pay off existing debt instead of retaining workers.

Under pressure from Republicans, the Federal Reserve also increased the maximum loan amount in the Main Street program to $200 million. At the same time, the rules were tweaked so that credit ratings could be ignored. A separate bond buyback plan could end up bailing out 90 fossil fuel producers along with 150 electric utilities that have financial exposure to the sector, according to one analysis.

In addition, a small business assistance program intended for mom and pop companies was raided early by coal and oil companies, which collected a combined $50 million. Three of the bailed-out companies have employed executives who have worked in the Trump administration, including the scandal-tarred former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt.

When Democrats in Congress complained about public subsidy of environmental degradation and business failure, the Fed insisted that its program changes were not targeted to help coal, oil and gas companies. However, oil-state senators and Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette couldn’t help bragging that the goal was exactly that.

The largesse has little to do with preserving jobs. Coal and oil companies had already begun large-scale layoffs, and they won’t bring those workers back no matter how much money the government showers on them. The reason is elementary: The market wants less of their product. Some shale-oil drillers are paying to have oil taken off their hands because they have no place to store it. The rig count in the Permian Basin, around West Texas, fell by 50 percent in the past five weeks. As new wells are completed, employment will fall further.

The decline in fossil energy long preceded Covid-19. Most of the nation’s coal companies had been through at least one bankruptcy. Shale oil producers lost a collective $189 billion over the past decade. In 10 of the last 11 years the oil industry was the largest issuer of junk bonds.

The rationale behind the giveaways to favored oil, coal and gas interests isn’t economic, it����ap simple smash-and-grab. According to Bloomberg News, Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. obtained a $9.7 million tax refund through the rescue package. Then, it turned around and requested that a bankruptcy judge authorize that same amount in bonuses for nine executives.

Republicans intend to redirect hundreds of millions from American workers into the pockets of investors who made bad bets on failing oil and coal companies. The source of the oil slick is in the swamp.

Carl Pope is a former chairman of the Sierra Club and an adviser to Michael R. Bloomberg.

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The National Security Council initiative would include scientists who question the severity of climate impacts and the extent to which humans contribute to the problem, according to these individuals, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The group would not be subject to the same level of public disclosure as a formal advisory committee.

The move would represent the Trump administration’s most forceful effort to date to challenge the scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are helping drive global warming and that the world could face dire consequences unless countries curb their carbon output over the next few decades.

The idea of a new working group, which top administration officials discussed Friday in the White House Situation Room, represents a modified version of an earlier plan to establish a federal advisory panel on climate and national security. That plan — championed by William Happer, NSC’s senior director and a physicist who has challenged the idea that carbon dioxide could damage the planet — would have created an independent federal advisory committee.

The Federal Advisory Committee Act imposes several ground rules for such panels, including that they meet in public, are subject to public records requests and include a representative membership.

While the plan is not finalized, NSC officials said they would take steps to assemble a group of researchers within the government. The group will not be tasked with scrutinizing recent intelligence community assessments of climate change, according to officials familiar with the plan.

The National Security Council declined requests to comment on the matter.

During the Friday meeting, these officials said, deputy national security adviser Charles Kupperman said Trump was upset that his administration had issued the National Climate Assessment, which must be published regularly under federal law. Kupperman added that congressional Democrats had seized upon the report, which is the product of more than a dozen agencies, to bolster their case for cutting carbon emissions as part of the Green New Deal.

Attendees at the session, which included acting interior secretary David Bernhardt and senior officials from across the government, debated how best to establish a group of researchers that could scrutinize recent federal climate reports.

Happer, who headed an advocacy group called the CO2 Coalition before joining the administration in the fall, has challenged the scientific consensus on climate change inside and outside of government.

Public records show the coalition, which describes its mission as informing policymakers and the public of the “important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy,” has received money from far-right organizations and donors with fossil fuel interests.

In 2017, according to federal tax filings obtained by the Climate Investigations Center, the group received $170,000 from the Mercer Family Foundation and more than $33,000 from the Charles Koch Institute.

One senior administration official said the president was looking for “a mixture of opinions” and disputed a massive inter-agency report in November that described intensifying climate change as a threat to the United States.

“The president wants people to be able to decide for themselves,” the aide said.

Several scientists, however, said the federal government����ap recent findings on climate change had received intense scrutiny from other researchers in the field before they became public.

Christopher Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute who served on the National Academy of Sciences review panel for the scientific report that formed the basis of last year’s climate assessment, said the committee met several times “to do a careful, page by page evaluation by the entire report.”

“The whole review process is confrontational from the very get-go, but it����ap based in scientific credibility, in a traceable chain of evidence through publications,” said Field, an earth system science and biology professor.

Trump officials had weighed the idea of conducting a “red team-blue team” exercise on climate change, an idea espoused by Scott Pruitt, who was then the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, during the early months of the administration. White House aides, including then-chief of staff John Kelly, blocked the idea, and at one point discussed whether to “ignore” the climate research being conducted by federal scientists.

Government researchers across a range of disciplines have identified climate change as a serious threat for the past two decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations.

In 2003, the Pentagon commissioned a report to examine how an abrupt change in climate would affect America’s defense capabilities. Its authors concluded that it “should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern.”

Last year, a military-funded study warned sea level rise and other climate impacts could make more than a thousand low-lying islands in the Pacific Ocean “uninhabitable” by midcentury, including an atoll where a missile defense site is located.

Just last month, the national intelligence director delivered a worldwide threat assessment that “climate hazards” including extreme weather, wildfires, droughts and acidifying oceans are worsening, “threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security.”

Judith Curry, a former Georgia Tech climate scientist whom Republicans have sought to testify on climate change because she often highlights the uncertainties that remain, said in an email that she backed the idea of an independent assessment of government climate reports as long as the participants reflected a range of perspectives and are not activists on either side of the debate.

But retired Rear Adm. David Titley, who served as oceanographer of the Navy and chief operating officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the new initiative could imperil national security by clouding “truthful assessments of the risks stemming from a changing climate.”

“I never thought I would live to see the day in the United States where our own White House is attacking the very science agencies that can help the president understand and manage the climate risks to security of today and tomorrow,” said Titley, who sits on the advisory board of the Center for Climate and Security, a nonpartisan group focused on climate-related risks. “Such attacks are un-American.”

These maneuvers come on the heels of a decisive election in which candidates and liberal activists invoked the name of the president to turn the state blue, handing Democrats control of all of Colorado’s statewide offices and both chambers of the state legislature.

Colorado’s new attorney general campaigned on being a check to the White House, and our new secretary of state promised she would make voter registration even easier. Meanwhile, in the statehouse, new and returning Democratic lawmakers are crafting bills that seek to preempt potential federal changes to abortion laws and how sexual assaults on campus are handled.

Sexual misconduct on campus

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos  in November for colleges to use in handling allegations of sexual harassment or assault.

DeVos characterized her Title IX overhaul as a fix for a “failed” and “shameful” system that was biased against the accused, but Democrats and victims’ rights advocates vehemently disagreed.

The rules would guarantee both parties the right to cross-examination, limit investigations to those that happen on campus or during campus programs and activities, and require assaults to be reported to designated administrators.

State Sen. Faith Winter, D-Westminster, told The Denver Post she thinks DeVos’ proposed rules would distress victims and discourage them from reporting. She wants Colorado’s campuses to follow a different set of rules.

SB19-007 would prohibit cross-examination, require universities to investigate claims that stem from certain off-campus events, prohibit retaliation, and set the standard of proof of wrongdoing at a “preponderance of the evidence.” It would also require institutions of higher education to adopt and periodically review their own sexual misconduct policies.

It’s possible, Winter said, that the federal government would see these regulations as conflicting with their own interpretation of Title IX.

“Then we get to have that conversation in the courts should the federal government decide to take action,” Winter said. “Many of the federal rules are a basement, and we will be going above that for better standards.”

Winter has worked on this bill for a few years, and said many colleges and universities already follow these rules.

“I think we’re saying in Colorado right now universities are doing a good job,” Winter said. “We want to continue doing a good job and, given national trends, we need to take a stand as a state and say this is a Colorado-based solution to protect women.”

Sen. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, opposes barring lawyers for accused students from speaking during proceedings.

“That doesn’t seem fair or appropriate,” Gardner said. “I know my colleagues are concerned an attorney for the accused would browbeat a victim, and I get that. I’m willing to have controls on cross-examination.”

But he also had a few criticisms of DeVos’ proposed rules.

“I think they were made in good faith,” Gardner said, “but in a couple of places they probably went further for the accused. … We’ve got to find the right balance. It’s important that we do.”

Climate change

Back in 2012, then-President Barack Obama finalized an agreement with the auto industry to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions by raising the number of miles per gallon the Environmental Protection Agency requires all vehicles get on average. It’s called the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standard, and everyone agreed to nearly double the fuel economy of vehicles by 2025.

But then, in the spring of 2018, President Donald Trump and then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced plans to roll them back.

However, Republican state Attorney General Cynthia Coffman’s successor, Democrat Phil Weiser, takes a very different view of the standards.

“The federal effort to repeal the CAFE mileage standards really to me is an appalling decision,” he said.

Weiser agrees with the attorneys general in nearly 20 states who are suing the EPA, saying the agency “arbitrarily reversed course” on the CAFE standards.

Colorado hasn’t joined the lawsuit yet, but Weiser said he expects the decision to be overturned, “and Colorado will be a part of it.”

U.S. Census 

Ditto the U.S. Commerce Department’s effort to ask a question about American citizenship in the 2020 Census.

Immigration advocates say the president is weaponizing the census, and they worry the question could cause an undercount of people in immigrant communities. The administration, on the other hand, argues that it has the right to ask the question and believes it is an important tool for election security.

“It was blatantly motivated by Steve Bannon,” Weiser said. “We will join that case, and we will win.”

Birth control and abortion 

Weiser might also add Colorado to two other federal lawsuits that challenge the Trump administration’s expansion of birth control exemptions in employer health insurance plans.

Basically, the administration wants to let certain nonprofit groups, for-profit companies and universities opt out of the Affordable Care Act requirement to cover contraception.

“These rules would undermine access to birth control as provided by the Affordable Care Act,” Weiser said. “I believe those rules are not justified by the law; they are a threat to the rule of law; and they hurt Coloradans who depend on this access to birth control.”

Inside the statehouse, NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado is working with Democratic lawmakers to codify access to abortion in Colorado’s statutes in case Roe vs. Wade, the federal court case that legalized abortion nationwide, is ever overturned, spokesperson Laura Chapin said.

Presidential elections

Trump didn’t win the national popular vote in 2016, but he became president by winning a majority of votes from the Electoral College.

Every state gets a set number of votes in the college based on the number of seats it holds in Congress, and a presidential candidate needs 270 votes to win. But some politicians — including Colorado state Sen. Mike Foote — want to change that.

Foote is running that would give Colorado’s nine electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the national popular vote if — and only if — enough states join the interstate compact that their collective electoral college votes are enough to pick a winner.

Voter registration

Colorado’s Democratic new secretary of state, Jena Griswold, told The Denver Post she sees one of her mandates as expanding the number of registered voters across the state.

The Centennial State already is a leader when it comes to voter registration, allowing residents to register on Election Day and mail in their ballots. But Griswold says we could do more. She is considering extending polling hours on Election Day and offering voter registration at Colorado’s Medicaid and health exchange offices.

“It’s a natural place to expand,” she said. “They’re already collecting information that’s compatible with registering someone to vote.”

Re: “At age 55, Clean Air Act is no relic,” Dec. 15 commentary

Kudos to Congresswoman Diana DeGette for championing Colorado’s methane regulations and the anniversary of the Clean Air Act. There is no doubt that our air is much cleaner today because of this farsighted legislation. The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act were signed into law by Republican presidents, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

Yet our current Republican president has done everything in his power to dismantle and roll back these important and vital pieces of environmental and public health legislation in favor of the fossil fuel industry’s pursuit of profit.

His cabinet appointments to the EPA and the Department of the Interior have been disastrous for our environment and our public health. Both EPA Director Scott Pruitt and now Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke have resigned not because of their disastrous policies but because of their lack of ethics.

We need and deserve more champions for the environment and guardians of our public health in Congress like Diana DeGette.

Carmi McLean, Aurora

Rep. DeGette is correct when she recognizes the significant contributions of the EPA in the 1970s, but as with other contributors, she fails to recognize the gradual drift of the agency to bureaucratic overreach. Often, the cost of compliance far exceeds the assumed benefits.

In May of this year, a column was published in The Post, “Science and Colorado’s ‘brown cloud,’ ” by Professor Jonathan Samet. In his column, he made two astonishingly false assertions. First, he advocated for research secrecy on the part of the EPA, a policy which would violate the principles of the scientific method. Second, he advocated for “the cleanest air possible.” The only reasonable goal would be the cleanest air that we (the taxpayers) can afford.

I applaud the Trump administration weeding out trivial regulations. Future proposals by the EPA should be judged by an agreed to cost-benefit standard. That standard must be stated in quantifiable benefits to the public, not in abstract “tons of carbon monoxide” which the average citizen is unable to confirm. If the regulation fails to meet that standard, it would automatically be deleted after a period of time, say ten years.

R.B. Gifford, Aurora

Thank you Congresswoman DeGette for your clear and concise article.

I can’t speak for all of the readers, but I try to breathe every single day. As such, I want my air to be a source of vitality, not poison.

Not only does limiting pollution keep our air cleaner now, but keeping the temperature down also leads to less ground-level ozone (which causes serious issues for the health of our lungs).

In Denver, our air quality is already not great, so we should be looking at ways to improve it, not make it worse.

The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act sponsored by three Republicans and five Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives is a market-based way forward for our nation and our health.

Additionally, it’ll be good for our economy, the pocketbooks of the poor, and with a border adjustment it keeps our domestic manufacturers on equal footing internationally.

A bipartisan win-win-win sounds great to me!

Ross Kelman, Denver

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Trump, in tweeting Zinke’s departure, said the former Montana congressman “accomplished much during his tenure” and that a replacement would be announced next week. The Cabinet post requires Senate confirmation.

Zinke is leaving weeks before Democrats take control of the House, a shift in power that promises to sharpen the probes into his conduct. His departure comes amid a staff shake-up as Trump heads into his third year in office facing increased legal exposure due to intensifying investigations into his campaign, business, foundation and administration.

Zinke’s resignation letter, obtained from a Zinke aide on Saturday, cites what he calls “meritless and false claims” and says that “to some, truth no longer matters.”

The letter, dated Saturday, said Zinke’s last day would be Jan. 2. It was not clear whether Zinke had already submitted the letter when Trump tweeted.

Zinke, 57, played a leading part in Trump’s efforts to roll back federal environmental regulations and promote domestic energy development. He drew attention from his first day on the job, when he mounted a roan gelding to ride across Washington’s National Mall to the Department of Interior.

Zinke had remained an ardent promoter of both missions, and his own macho image, despite growing talk that he had lost Trump’s favor. On Tuesday, Zinke appeared on stage at an Environmental Protection Agency ceremony for a rollback on water regulations. Mentioning his background as a Navy SEAL at least twice, he led the audience in a round of applause for the U.S. oil and gas industry.

Trump never established a deep personal connection with Zinke but appreciated how he stood tall against criticisms from environmental groups as he worked to roll back protections. But the White House concluded in recent weeks that Zinke was likely the Cabinet member most vulnerable to investigations led by newly empowered Democrats in Congress, according to an administration official not authorized to publicly discuss personnel matters who spoke on condition of anonymity.

His tenure was temporarily extended as Interior helped with the response to California wildfires and the West Wing was consumed with speculation over the future of chief of staff John Kelly. But White House officials pressured him to resign, the official said, which he did after his final public appearance at his department’s Christmas party on Thursday night.

As interior secretary, Zinke pushed to develop oil, natural gas and coal beneath public lands in line with the administration’s business-friendly aims. But he has been dogged by ethics probes, including one centered on a Montana land deal involving a foundation he created and the chairman of an energy services company, Halliburton, that does business with the Interior Department.

Investigators also are reviewing Zinke’s decision to block two tribes from opening a casino in Connecticut and his redrawing of boundaries to shrink a Utah national monument. Zinke has denied wrongdoing.

The Associated Press reported last month that the department’s internal watchdog had referred an investigation of Zinke to the Justice Department.

Zinke’s travels with his wife, Lola Zinke, also had come under scrutiny.

Interior’s inspector general’s office said Zinke allowed his wife to ride in government vehicles with him despite a department policy that prohibits nongovernment officials from doing so. The report also said the department spent more than $25,000 to provide security for the couple when they took a vacation to Turkey and Greece.

Trump told reporters this fall he was evaluating Zinke’s future in the administration in light of the allegations and offered a lukewarm vote of confidence. Zinke in November denied he already was hunting for his next job.

“I enjoy working for the president,” he told a Montana radio station. “Now, If you do your job, he supports you.”

“I think I’m probably going to be the commander of space command,” Zinke said. “How’s that one?”

Zinke outlasted EPA chief Scott Pruitt, another enthusiastic advocate of Trump’s business-friendly way of governing who lost favor with Trump amid ethics scandals. Pruitt resigned in July. Trump’s first Health and Human Services secretary, Tom Price, also resigned under a cloud of ethical questions.

Democratic leaders in Congress were scathing in response to the news that Zinke was leaving as well.

“Ryan Zinke was one of the most toxic members of the cabinet in the way he treated our environment, our precious public lands, and the way he treated the govt like it was his personal honey pot,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of the New York tweeted Saturday. “The swamp cabinet will be a little less foul without him.”

House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who is set to become speaker in January, said Zinke had “been a shameless handmaiden for the special interests” and his “staggering ethical abuses have delivered a serious and lasting blow to America’s public lands, environment, clean air and clean water.”

Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, had warned that after Democrats took control of the House they intended to call Zinke to testify on his ethics issues.

Grijalva spokesman Adam Sarvana said Saturday that committee leaders still intended to ask for Zinke’s testimony. “It’s safe to say that Citizen Zinke may be leaving, but real oversight of former Secretary Zinke has not even started,” Sarvana said in an email.

Earlier this month, Zinke unleashed a jarring personal attack on Grijalva, tweeting, “It’s hard for him to think straight from the bottom of the bottle.”

Zinke got a warmer send-off from Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, head of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who said in a statement that he had been a “strong partner for Western states.”

Under Zinke’s watch, the Interior Department moved to auction off more oil leases, ended a moratorium on new sales of federally owned coal, and repealed mandates governing drilling. Zinke’s focus on the president’s energy agenda was cheered by oil, gas and mining advocates, who credit the administration with seeking to balance conservation with development on public lands. But his tenure was denounced by most conservation groups.

“Zinke will go down as the worst Interior secretary in history,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement released Saturday. “His slash-and-burn approach was absolutely destructive for public lands and wildlife. Allowing David Bernhardt to continue to call the shots will still be just as ugly. Different people, same appetite for greed and profit.”

Bernhardt, the deputy secretary, is in line to lead the Interior Department on an interim basis. He has spent years in Washington as a lobbyist for the oil and gas industry and has deep ties to Republican politicians and conservative interest groups.

Two outgoing Republican congressmen are said to be interested in the job.

Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho planned to go to the White House on Saturday to discuss the job with officials, said a GOP congressional aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe Labrador’s private plans. Labrador, 51, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, who is retiring from Congress after eight years. He lost a bid for his state’s GOP gubernatorial nomination last spring.

Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., is also interested in Zinke’s job, according to another Republican congressional aide who described the situation only on condition of anonymity. The aide said the White House has made inquiries about Denham to Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who will be House minority leader next year. Denham, 51, has been involved in water issues in California. He lost his bid for re-election last month.

As head of Interior, Zinke made plans to realign the agency’s bureaucracy, trimming the equivalent of 4,600 jobs, about 7 percent of its workforce. He also proposed a massive overhaul that would have moved decision-making out of Washington, relocating headquarters staff to Western states at a cost of $17.5 million.

Zinke was a one-term congressman when Trump selected him to join his incoming Cabinet in December 2016.

An early Trump supporter, Zinke is close to the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and publicly expressed his interest in a Cabinet post when Trump visited Montana in May 2016.

____

Brown reported from Red Lodge, Montana. Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Alan Fram in Washington contributed to this report.

The government����ap current, decades-old guidance says that any exposure to harmful radiation is a cancer risk. And critics say the proposed change could lead to higher levels of exposure for workers at nuclear installations and oil and gas drilling sites, medical workers doing X-rays and CT scans, people living next to Superfund sites and any members of the public who one day might find themselves exposed to a radiation release.

President Donald Trump’s administration already has targeted a range of other regulations on toxins and pollutants, including coal power plant emissions and car exhaust, that it sees as costly and burdensome for businesses. Supporters of the EPA’s proposal argue the government����ap current model that there is no safe level of radiation — the so-called linear no-threshold model — forces unnecessary spending for handling exposure in accidents, at nuclear plants, in medical centers and at other sites.

At issue is the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule on transparency in science.

EPA spokesman John Konkus said Tuesday, “The proposed regulation doesn’t talk about radiation or any particular chemicals. And as we indicated in our response, EPA’s policy is to continue to use the linear-no-threshold model for population-level radiation protection purposes which would not, under the proposed regulation that has not been finalized, trigger any change in that policy.”

But in an April news release announcing the proposed rule, the agency quoted Edward Calabrese, a toxicologist at the University of Massachusetts who has said weakening limits on radiation exposure would save billions of dollars and have a positive impact on human health.

The proposed rule would require regulators to consider “various threshold models across the exposure range” when it comes to dangerous substances. While it doesn’t specify radiation, the release quotes Calabrese calling the proposal “a major scientific step forward” in assessing the risk of “chemicals and radiation.”

Konkus said the release was written during the tenure of former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. He could not explain why Calabrese was quoted citing the impact on radiation levels if the agency does not believe there would be any.
Calabrese was to be the lead witness at a congressional hearing Wednesday on the EPA proposal.

Radiation is everywhere, from potassium in bananas to the microwaves popping our popcorn. Most of it is benign. But what����ap of concern is the higher-energy, shorter-wave radiation, such as X-rays, that can penetrate and disrupt living cells, sometimes causing cancer.

As recently as this March, the EPA’s online guidelines for radiation effects advised: “Current science suggests there is some cancer risk from any exposure to radiation.”

“Even exposures below 100 millisieverts” — an amount roughly equivalent to 25 chest X-rays or about 14 CT chest scans — “slightly increase the risk of getting cancer in the future,” the agency’s guidance said.

But that online guidance — separate from the rule-change proposal — was edited in July to add a section emphasizing the low individual odds of cancer: “According to radiation safety experts, radiation exposures of … 100 millisieverts usually result in no harmful health effects, because radiation below these levels is a minor contributor to our overall cancer risk,” the revised policy says.

Calabrese and his supporters argue that smaller exposures of cell-damaging radiation and other carcinogens can serve as stressors that activate the body’s repair mechanisms and can make people healthier. They compare it to physical exercise or sunlight.

Mainstream scientific consensus on radiation is based on deceptive science, says Calabrese, who argued in a 2014 essay for “righting the past deceptions and correcting the ongoing errors in environmental regulation.”

EPA spokesman Konkus said in an email that the proposed rule change is about “increasing transparency on assumptions” about how the body responds to different doses of dangerous substances and that the agency “acknowledges uncertainty regarding health effects at low doses” and supports more research on that.

The radiation regulation is supported by Steven Milloy, a Trump transition team member for the EPA who is known for challenging widely accepted ideas about manmade climate change and the health risks of tobacco. He has been promoting Calabrese’s theory of healthy radiation on his blog.

But Jan Beyea, a physicist whose work includes research with the National Academies of Science on the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant accident, said the EPA science proposal represents voices “generally dismissed by the great bulk of scientists.”

The EPA proposal would lead to “increases in chemical and radiation exposures in the workplace, home and outdoor environment, including the vicinity of Superfund sites,” Beyea wrote.

At the level the EPA website talks about, a person’s risk of cancer from radiation exposure is perhaps 1 percent, Beyea said.

“The individual risk will likely be low, but not the cumulative social risk,” Beyea said.

“If they even look at that — no, no, no,” said Terrie Barrie, a resident of Craig, and an advocate for her husband and other workers at the now-closed Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant, where the U.S. government is compensating certain cancer victims regardless of their history of exposure.

“There’s no reason not to protect people as much as possible,” said Barrie.

U.S. agencies for decades have followed a policy that there is no threshold of radiation exposure that is risk-free.

The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements reaffirmed that principle this year after a review of 29 public health studies on cancer rates among people exposed to low-dose radiation, via the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan in World War II, leak-prone Soviet nuclear installations, medical treatments and other sources.

Twenty of the 29 studies directly support the principle that even low-dose exposures cause a significant increase in cancer rates, said Roy Shore, chief of research at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, a joint project of the United States and Japan. Scientists found most of the other studies were inconclusive and decided one was flawed.

None supported the theory there is some safe threshold for radiation, said Shore, who chaired the review.

If there were a threshold that it����ap safe to go below, “those who profess that would have to come up with some data,” Shore said in an interview.

“Certainly the evidence did not point that way,” he said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates electronic devices that emit radiation, advises, broadly, that a single CT scan with a dose of 10 millisieverts may increase risks of a fatal cancer by about 1 chance in 2,000.

Supporters of the proposal say it����ap time to rethink radiation regulation.

“Right now, we spend an enormous effort trying to minimize low doses” at nuclear power plants, for example, said Brant Ulsh, a physicist with the California-based consulting firm M.H. Chew and Associates. “Instead, let����ap spend the resources on minimizing the effect of a really big event.”

A rise of 7 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 4 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels would be catastrophic, according to scientists. Many coral reefs would dissolve in increasingly acidic oceans. Parts of Manhattan and Miami would be underwater without costly coastal defenses. Extreme heat waves would routinely smother large parts of the globe.

But the administration did not offer this dire forecast as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed.

The draft statement, issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), was written to justify President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze federal fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks built after 2020. While the proposal would increase greenhouse gas emissions, the impact statement says, that policy would add just a very small drop to a very big, hot bucket.

“The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it,” said Michael MacCracken, who served as a senior scientist at the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 2002.

The document projects that global temperature will rise by nearly 3.5 degrees Celsius above the average temperature between 1986 and 2005 regardless of whether Obama-era tailpipe standards take effect or are frozen for six years, as the Trump administration has proposed. The global average temperature rose more than 0.5 degrees Celsius between 1880, the start of industrialization, and 1986, so the analysis assumes a roughly 4 degree Celsius or 7 degree Fahrenheit increase from preindustrial levels.

The world would have to make deep cuts in carbon emissions to avoid this drastic warming, the analysis states. And that “would require substantial increases in technology innovation and adoption compared to today’s levels and would require the economy and the vehicle fleet to move away from the use of fossil fuels, which is not currently technologically feasible or economically feasible.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

World leaders have pledged to keep the world from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels, and agreed to try to keep the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But the current greenhouse gas cuts pledged under the 2015 Paris climate agreement are not steep enough to meet either goal. Scientists predict a 4 degree Celsius rise by the century’s end if countries take no meaningful actions to curb their carbon output.

Trump has vowed to exit the Paris accord and called climate change a hoax. In the past two months, the White House has pushed to dismantle nearly half a dozen major rules aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, deregulatory moves intended to save companies hundreds of millions of dollars.

If enacted, the administration’s proposals would give new life to aging coal plants; allow oil and gas operations to release more methane into the atmosphere; and prevent new curbs on greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air-conditioning units. The vehicle rule alone would put 8 billion additional tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere this century, more than a year’s worth of total U.S. emissions, according to the government’s own analysis.

Administration estimates acknowledge that the policies would release far more greenhouse gas emissions from America’s energy and transportation sectors than otherwise would have been allowed.

David Pettit, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who testified against Trump’s freeze of fuel efficiency standards this week in Fresno, Calif., said his organization is prepared to use the administration’s own numbers to challenge their regulatory rollbacks. He noted that the NHTSA document projects that if the world takes no action to curb emissions, current atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide would rise from 410 parts per million to 789 ppm by 2100.

“I was shocked when I saw it,” Pettit said in a phone interview. “These are their numbers. They aren’t our numbers.”

Conservatives who condemned Obama’s climate initiatives as regulatory overreach have defended the Trump administration’s approach, calling it a more reasonable course.

Obama’s climate policies were costly to industry and yet “mostly symbolic,” because they would have made barely a dent in global carbon dioxide emissions, said Heritage Foundation research fellow Nick Loris, adding: “Frivolous is a good way to describe it.”

NHTSA commissioned ICF International Inc., a consulting firm based in Fairfax, Va., to help prepare the impact statement. An agency spokeswoman said the Environmental Protection Agency “and NHTSA welcome comments on all aspects of the environmental analysis” but declined to provide additional information about the agency’s long-term temperature forecast.

Federal agencies typically do not include century-long climate projections in their environmental impact statements. Instead, they tend to assess a regulation’s impact during the life of the program – the years a coal plant would run, for example, or the amount of time certain vehicles would be on the road.

Using the no-action scenario “is a textbook example of how to lie with statistics,” said MIT Sloan School of Management professor John Sterman. “First, the administration proposes vehicle efficiency policies that would do almost nothing [to fight climate change]. Then [the administration] makes their impact seem even smaller by comparing their proposals to what would happen if the entire world does nothing.”

This week, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned leaders gathered in New York, “If we do not change course in the next two years, we risk runaway climate change. . . . Our future is at stake.”

Federal and independent research – including projections included in last month’s analysis of the revised fuel-efficiency standards – echoes that theme. The environmental impact statement cites “evidence of climate-induced changes,” such as more frequent droughts, floods, severe storms and heat waves, and estimates that seas could rise nearly three feet globally by 2100 if the world does not decrease its carbon output.

Two articles published in the journal Science since late July – both co-authored by federal scientists – predicted that the global landscape could be transformed “without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions” and declared that soaring temperatures worldwide bore humans’ “fingerprint.”

Administration officials say they take federal scientific findings into account when crafting energy policy – along with their interpretation of the law and President Trump’s agenda. The EPA’s acting administrator, Andrew Wheeler, has been among the Trump officials who have noted that U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants have fallen over time.

But the debate comes after a troubling summer of devastating wildfires, record-breaking heat and a catastrophic hurricane – each of which, federal scientists say, signals a warming world.

Some Democratic elected officials, such as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, said Americans are starting to recognize these events as evidence of climate change. On Feb. 25, Inslee met privately with several Cabinet officials, including then-EPA chief Scott Pruitt, and Western state governors. Inslee accused them of engaging in “morally reprehensible” behavior that threatened his children and grandchildren, according to four meeting participants, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details of the private conversation.

In an interview, Inslee said that the ash from wildfires that covered Washington residents’ car hoods this summer, and the acrid smoke that filled their air, has made more voters of both parties grasp the real-world implications of climate change.

“There is anger in my state about the administration’s failure to protect us,” he said. “When you taste it on your tongue, it’s a reality.”

The EPA on Wednesday released Pruitt����ap financial disclosure report for 2017. The report required Pruitt to disclose sources of income and gifts received because of his government work.

The report makes no mention of a $50-a-night Washington condo he stayed in or other perks was said to have received in office. Among them: hard-sought tickets to the Rose Bowl and at least one short-term gig for his wife as an event planner, for an event where Pruitt was a featured guest.

Pruitt did not address details about the allegations, many of which are detailed in testimony from former aides and in emails released through the Freedom of Information Act. Rather, he addressed them more broadly in the 13-page report.

“To the extent that I am aware of specific allegations, I dispute the facts asserted and, accordingly, am not aware of reportable gifts,” Pruitt said.

Trump announced Pruitt����ap resignation on July 5 amid near-daily headlines about new allegations and federal investigations involving the then-EPA chief.

Pruitt said his wife’s business made between $15,000 and $50,000 in 2017, and that none of Marilyn Pruitt����ap work was for organizations or people he would have regulated as EPA head.

Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general, reported between $150,000 and $300,000 in debts in 2017 to two Oklahoma law firms.

Cleta Mitchell, a Washington lawyer and friend of Pruitt who at times has acted as a spokesperson regarding Pruitt����ap legal troubles, did not immediately return an email seeking comment Wednesday.