Scott Pruitt Is a Historically Bad EPA Chief. But This One Might Have Been Even Worse.

Oh, and her son Neil is on the US Supreme Court.

Mother Jones illustration

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Scott Pruitt isn’t the first EPA administrator famously hostile to the agency. That distinction goes to Anne Gorsuch. Appointed by President Ronald Reagan, the agency’s first female head was known for her jet-black hair, fur coats, proclivity for Marlboro cigarettes—and coziness with polluters.

Just weeks after taking the post on May 20, 1981, Gorsuch relaxed clean air standards. By September, she had slashed 3,200 jobs and the agency’s budget by 22 percent, even as she claimed to have shrunk the manual of clean water regulations from six inches high to half an inch. She tried to have a 30-by-40-mile rectangle of ocean off mid-Atlantic beaches designated as a spot where incinerator ships could burn toxic waste. Despite public fervor over hazardous waste sites—the Love Canal disaster had prompted passage of the Superfund law just before Reagan took office—Gorsuch lifted regulations for waste disposal and cut deals benefiting megacorporation Chemical Waste Management, which was later sued for illegal dumping.

A fierce politician—a newspaper in her native Colorado once wrote that she “could kick a bear to death with her bare feet”—she resigned after she was held in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over Superfund records suspected to reveal mismanagement. But the controversy that surrounded her tenure had a lasting influence on her son Neil—the rock-ribbed conservative nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as an associate justice of the US Supreme Court, where he is expected to rule on environmental cases for decades to come.

Image credit: Con Keyes/LA Times/Getty

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate