mr. pruitt. mr. pruitt, you recall, when he was the attorney general of oklahoma, he sued the e.p.a.an a dozen times and more recently as the newly appointed e.p.a. administrator said, carbon dioxide is not even a greenhouse gas. >> brown: miles o'brien, thanks as always. >> you're welcome, jeff. >> woodruff: now, how an unsolved murder in the nation's capital turned into a conspiracy theory, and then became a case study of one kind of fake news. it underscores, once again, the problem of polarized politics and alternative realities. john yang reports. >> to the extent of my ability, i am not going to stop trying to find the truth. >> reporter: the story of seth rich's death is a story of how "fake news" spreads, from websites and online forums like reddit, to prime-time cable tv. >> murder investigation. >> reporter: early one morning last july, 27-year-old rich was found fatally shot near his washington, d.c. home. politics had drawn the omaha native to the city, and he was working at the democratic national committee when he died. the case is still unsolved. d.c. police theorize i

they know their administrator pruitt. mr. president, pruitt's record at e.p.a.eveals he is unabashedly looking out for his industry donors at the expense of public health and the environment. as far as i can tell, every action since he has taken -- he has taken since taking office will lead to an enriched industry at the expense of dirtier air and dirtier water and a more imperilled climate. myron ebell is someone i don't quote often. he is the head of president trump's e.p.a. transition team, and he is a prominent climate denier. but he has something interesting to say about scott pruitt. he has said that he thinks scott pruitt is using e.p.a. as a -- and i quote him here -- steppingstone to political office, end quote. he has said that everything pruitt does is going to be a political calculation about what furthers his own political career, end quote. so this is not a liberal, an environmentalist making these accusations. this is somebody who is right in scott pruitt's climate denial wheelhouse. this is a guy right from the trump science denial e.p.a. destruc

. >> so i think going forward, the current epa mr, scott pruitt, i think he's a rule of law guy, a former attorney general, i think they're going to go through the options. certainly the path that i described is one that the agency has taken before and is definite with past actions, if you can go out and point to something that somebody is using economically and functionally and similarly situated people can use it. there's also a part of this that got missed in the old version where epa set emissions guidelines and the states were groonted a fair amount of flexibility by congress to move the needle up or down. so we may see that. they may look at some of the arguments for a null outcome. i think they'll look at that, look at the litigation risks and the policy. i think it came up a couple of times in confirmation hearings. he's a rule of law guy and i think he'll make a decision based on legal criteria. >> having picked the fights about key power plan and keystone, just to get everybody's blood flowing, one of the happy words now is frush. critical to the energy sector, i'll editorialize

mr. pruitt, we are talking about memos and what's happening in the white house.ican public really needs to be foe cuffed on, right? steve: our personal safety. ainsley: protecting our kids from cancer. >> they want leadership. and this president is providing leadership in so many areas. it gets lost in washington, d.c. malaise. steve: provide leadership to do what with the environment. >> clean up these sites. set a goal and say 1322 sites unaccept somebody. 22 years to make a decision is unacceptable. get st. louis cleaned up. steve: how much is it going to cost? >> the great thing about this is we have funding. people out there responsible for these sites to clean up. moneys are there to do so. it's not a matter of money. it's a matter of leadership and attitude and management. we need to do it much better. brian: when are you going to make a decision about leaving and staying in paris on the paris agreement. >> i think when the president gets back from the g 7. i'm actually attending the g 7 early june as well there will be a decision on paris. very important

mr. pruitt. >> we talked to the pga about it. >> i really think they should stay out of it.se golf has no place in this budget. i think you should golf with your own money. steve: i think the president loves to golf. ainsley: that way the democrats will block it. brian: fund planned parenthood and medicaid for puerto rico. they get another 350 million to bail out their medicaid system. the question is what did the president get? he got some money for defense. i believe that helps the country and does get some money for border security. symbolic denial of the wall because the president ran on it and to see nancy pelosi revel in it is. ainsley: we'll allow to you have more money for border security and more money for drones just not the wall. as long as you don't get what you wanted, then we are okay with it. steve: the white house says this is their strategy getting the best deal they can right now in the same week they are going to try to take on healthcare. here's the thing. the democrats are actually celebrating in a big way, they say what they have gotten in this particul

mr. pruitt is exactly that. he's saying let's go through the next five years and see where we stand.ull out of it and say thank you very much, but we'll take care of our climate, you take care of yours. >> i think it's a mistake to do that because it's voluntary. there is no penalty. if you don't produce the reductions that you've promised, no one does anything to you. and so when japan had a problem because of the fukushima power plant, they went in and backtracked. they renegotiated. this is a pact that can contain plenty of opportunities for renegotiation. we don't need to pull out now. there are about 200 nations that are surrounding this thing, and i think what we want to do is have a leadership position that makes sense for us. and by -- charles: what would you do differently? >> i would go in and downgrade our commitment. we're more than halfway to the 26-28% commitment we made. we're at about 13%. let's go in, and just as herb is talking about, let's get something reasonable, let's get something that level sets with the two dynamos, china and india, which are becoming huge us

mr. speaker, you know what? i think i trust public health experts when it comes to protecting our families over administrative pruitt -- administrator pruewhoit sued the e.p.a. at least 14 times as oklahoma's attorney general, opposing important protections for our air and water. talk about the fox guarding the hen house. mr. speaker, we were not sent here to auction off the health and safety of millions of americans to the highest bidder. every day the trump administration gets more brazen with their giveaways to special interests. raising serious questions about corruption and conflicts of interest. donald trump promised to drain the swamp. he's created a cesspool. we're talking about people's lives here, mr. speaker. this pesticide has been shown to harm women, children and families. it has no place on our farms or in our food system. our health should not be for sale. it isn't hard to connect the dots here. the e.p.a. abruptly reversed its efforts to ban the toxic chemical just weeks after the chemical's manufacturer made a political contribution to the newly elected president. and we know their decision wasn't

mr. inhofe: he signed an executive order instructing the e.p.a. to unwind the united states from this regulation. that's exactly what my friend, e.p.a. administrator scott pruitt, is working to accomplish right now. while the president has disavowed the paris agreement, he has not pulled out as of this time. he's been kind of busy doing other things. i understand there are a lot of competing voices on this front. so many people don't believe the paris agreement is binding. while that is true, to a certain degree, it's kind of shortsighted. i'm speaking today because i believe the president should make a clean exit from the paris agreement and avoid a lot of confusion. and there are two key reasons that i want to do that. first one -- reason number one is, if we remain in the agreement, we are putting ourselves at significant litigation risk. the paris agreement commits the united states to lowering its greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% by 2025. this is interesting because in the paris agreement that took place, this -- the president at that time, president obama, was getting just a little bit panicky. he had already gone to seven of these and had been una

pruitt to overturning anti-and dangerous contempt to a proven science. and pulling the united states from a global climate change prevention pakistan and could have consequences. mr. speaker, the list goes on and on and on. before i continue, i want to yield to my good friend and has i do.lous fir name like donald payne squr. thank you, congressman. your voice and add vow casey will move us towards sounder policies and i look forward to orking with you. r. payne: let me thank the gentleman from virginia, the where lace of my mother, my grandfather was a tobacco farmer. i'm from newark, new jersey, the garden state. we didn't raise much tobacco there in the guard b state. but my friends used to think i was going on vacation when i would leave. i said i wasn't going to vacation, i was going to work and that's what we did for the summer. ut it was great experience and always have great memories of he commonwealth. mr. speaker, last month, as part of a partnership with the national newspapers publishers association, i wrote an op-ed on environmental justice issues. i'll repeat what i wrote then which is that the environmental justice should be a national priority, no

mr. schatz: thank you very much. scott pruitt, betsy devos, there's a pattern here. the administration keeps choosing people who seem like the wrong fit to run their agency, and now we're about to add jay clayton to the list. now, he is different in a lot of ways. i met with him. he's a good person. he is a sensible person desiring to be a public servant and he's a very smart lawyer, but he's not the right candidate to lead the s.e.c. because it's on the front lines of making sure that wall street follows the rules. and that's the number one issue here because mr. clayton has too many ties to the industry that he would be in charge of overseeing. wall street is full of his friends and business contacts and there is nothing wrong with that generally. we need lawyers in the securities industry, we need honorable people who help companies to do an i.p.o., but that doesn't mean that individual is appropriate to be in charge of the s.e.c., in charge of reining in wall street. that's causes the problem. i do not question mr. clayton's integrity. i have no doubt that he's a