WASHINGTON – According to U.S. News, President-elect Donald Trump reportedly has selected Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R) to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “drawing swift condemnation from Democrats and environmental groups.”

The news source writes that Pruitt has openly questioned climate change since taking office in 2011. "Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind," Pruitt co-wrote with Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange in a May 17 op-ed in the National Review.

Pruitt has also been critical of EPA regulations, writes U.S. News, noting that he has filed or joined multiple lawsuits against the agency, including an effort by more than two dozen states to block the Clean Power Plan. "No state should comply with the Clean Power Plan if it means surrendering decision-making authority to the EPA," Pruitt testified before a Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee in May 2015, adding, "States should be left to make decisions on fuel diversity that best meet their generation needs."

The Washington Post reports that environmental groups reacted with alarm at the nomination. “Scott Pruitt has a record of attacking the environmental protections that EPA is charged with enforcing. He has built his political career by trying to undermine EPA’s mission of environmental protection,” said Fred Krupp, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund.

Meanwhile other industry representatives expressed support of Trump’s EPA nomination. 

“The office he headed was present and accounted for in the battle to keep EPA faithful to its statutory authority and respectful of the role of the states in our system of cooperative federalism,” Scott Segal at Bracewell told the Post. “Given that we are almost two decades overdue for an overhaul of the Clean Air Act, there is interest on both sides of the aisle to look at that statute.”