The White House is withdrawing its nominee to direct the Council on Environment Quality as Senate Republicans questioned her qualifications, The Washington Post reports.
The full Senate declined to consider Kathleen Hartnett White's nomination in late December, following a bruising confirmation hearing where she struggled to answer basic science questions.
Hartnett White, who once described the belief in "global warming" as a "kind of paganism" for "secular elites," would have overseen environmental energy policies in her role. Senators challenged her statements during her hearing, and more than 300 scientists wrote to the Senate opposing her nomination "because one thing more dangerous than climate change is lying," they said.
A fellow of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation and former head of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Hartnett White also questioned how much humans contribute to global warming during her confirmation hearing.
"I'm not a scientist, but in my personal capacity, I have many questions that remain unanswered by current climate policy," she said. "I think we indeed need to have more precise explanations of the human role and the natural role."
Trump resubmitted Hartnett White’s name to the Senate in January.
Her withdrawal brought relief to some of her critics.
"A while ago, I wrote that many Trump appointees to science-based positions could be considered to either have deep conflicts of interest, to be fundamentally opposed to the mission of the agency they were to lead or totally unqualified. Hartnett-White was all three — a trifecta," said Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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