EPA administrator Scott Pruitt resigns

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt has resigned, President Donald Trump said in a pair of tweets today.

Pruitt's dutiful slashing of regulations that frustrated businesses and conservative voters offered months of inoculation from reports detailing his use of the position for personal gain. But concerns about Pruitt's use of the office — from security spending to personal use of agency resources — grew along with frustration from farmers and other industries over the agency's direction.

"Within the agency Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this," Trump said in a tweet.

Deputy administrator Andrew Wheeler would assume administrator duties on 9 July, Trump said.

Pruitt's departure could halt resentment threatening to spoil support of the Trump administration among key political allies in agriculture. Even as they praised the deregulatory fervor, corn farmers important to Trump's political success grew frustrated with the agency's willingness to cut mandates creating a market for their crop.

"This is kind of hard for me to say, because he has done so much good, from my point of view, as EPA director," the powerful and increasingly frustrated US senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told reporters in early June. "But he screws it all up by being anti-ethanol."

Trump tapped Pruitt in December 2016 to reverse an "anti-energy agenda." The former attorney general of Oklahoma, oil industry ally and EPA skeptic, embraced a charge to halt federal greenhouse gas reductions.

The administrator also became a caricature of Washington largesse, providing opponents a metastasizing symbol of the abuse of money and power that Trump railed against on the campaign trail. Congress questioned Pruitt's spending on security and travel less than nine months after confirming him to the office. But Pruitt's scandals quickly devolved from the agency budget to accusations that he was using the office to secure personal access to expensive meals, fast food franchises, travel lotion and a used mattress.

"I am afraid my good friend Scott Pruitt has done some things that really surprise me," US senator Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) said in a 13 June nationally broadcast interview.

Inhofe, a former head of the senate's environment and public works committee, said he flew Pruitt around the state during the former Oklahoma attorney general's first political campaign. He raised the prospects of a replacement during the interview.

"I would say this — there is a guy behind him, in Andrew Wheeler, who is really qualified, too," Inhofe said, referring to a former aide who now serves as an EPA deputy administrator. "So that might be a good swap."

Trump maintained public support as headlines piled up.

"Scott Pruitt is doing a great job within the walls of the EPA," Trump told reporters 8 June before leaving for the G7 economic summit. "Outside, he is being attacked very viciously by the press. And I am not saying he is blameless, but we will see what happens."

A week later, he repeated concerns to reporters in a freewheeling gaggle on the White House lawn.

"I am not happy about certain things, but he has done a fantastic job running the EPA, which is very overriding," Trump said.