# Andrew Wheeler Andrew Wheeler (b. 1964) served as Administrator of the [[EPA]] from 2019 to 2021, after stepping in as acting administrator following [[Scott Pruitt]]'s resignation amid ethics scandals in July 2018. Where Pruitt's tenure was defined by personal misconduct that overshadowed policy, Wheeler brought a quieter competence to the same [[Deregulation]] agenda — rolling back Obama-era environmental rules with fewer headlines but arguably greater effectiveness. His career trajectory from EPA staffer to Senate aide to coal-industry lobbyist to EPA chief is a textbook illustration of the [[Revolving Door]] between government and the industries it regulates. ## Early career and Senate years Wheeler grew up in a small town in Ohio and earned degrees in biology and business. He began his career at the [[EPA]] itself in the early 1990s, working in the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics — an ironic starting point given the direction his career would take. He later moved to Capitol Hill, where he spent over a decade as a senior staffer on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee under Chairman [[James Inhofe]], the Senate's most prominent [[Climate Change Denialism]] voice. In that role Wheeler helped shape Republican environmental-policy strategy during the George W. Bush years, including opposition to the Kyoto Protocol and resistance to mandatory greenhouse-gas regulations. The Inhofe connection is significant. Working for the senator who famously called climate change "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" placed Wheeler at the intellectual center of the Republican Party's fossil-fuel defense. The relationships he built with industry stakeholders during this period laid the groundwork for his later lobbying career. ## Lobbying career After leaving the Senate in 2009, Wheeler joined the lobbying firm Faegre Baker Daniels, where his primary client was Murray Energy Corporation, at the time the largest privately held coal company in the United States. He registered as a lobbyist for Murray Energy and other energy-sector clients, advocating against EPA regulations on mercury emissions, coal ash disposal, and carbon dioxide. His lobbying disclosures show contacts with both the EPA and members of Congress on behalf of coal-industry interests. The Murray Energy relationship drew intense scrutiny during his confirmation process. Murray Energy's CEO, Bob Murray, had given [[Donald Trump]] an "action plan" for rolling back environmental regulations shortly after the 2016 election, and critics noted that Wheeler's subsequent EPA agenda closely tracked that wishlist. The [[Revolving Door]] dynamic was unusually direct: Wheeler had lobbied the very agency he was now being asked to lead, on behalf of the very industry whose regulatory burden he would be positioned to reduce. The Senate confirmed him 52–47 in February 2019, with only one Republican voting no. Wheeler's lobbying portfolio also included work on behalf of energy utilities seeking relief from [[Clean Air Act]] compliance costs and chemical manufacturers pushing back against stricter [[PFAS]] regulation. His client list read as a preview of his regulatory target list — a pattern that environmental groups cited as evidence of [[Regulatory Capture]] operating in plain sight. ## EPA tenure (2018–2021) Wheeler's regulatory rollback agenda was systematic and wide-ranging. His major actions included replacing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan with the weaker Affordable Clean Energy rule, which gave states broad discretion to set their own coal-plant emission standards rather than requiring a shift toward cleaner energy sources. The D.C. Circuit Court later found this replacement rule insufficient, and the legal battle over power-plant emissions continued through [[West Virginia v. EPA]], in which the Supreme Court limited the EPA's authority to impose sector-wide generation-shifting requirements. He rolled back the [[Mercury and Air Toxics Standards]], weakening the cost-benefit analysis framework that had justified regulating mercury and other hazardous pollutants from power plants. He revised the Waters of the United States rule to narrow federal jurisdiction over wetlands and smaller waterways, removing protections from roughly half the nation's wetlands. He relaxed methane-emission reporting requirements for oil and gas operations and eased coal-ash disposal rules — his very first regulatory action as acting administrator. Wheeler also weakened auto-emission standards, replacing the Obama-era fuel-economy targets with the less ambitious SAFE Vehicles Rule, and narrowed the scientific studies the EPA could use in rulemaking through a "transparency" rule that critics said would exclude major epidemiological research. On [[PFAS]] — the "forever chemicals" contaminating water supplies nationwide — Wheeler moved slowly, issuing a non-binding action plan rather than enforceable drinking-water standards, drawing bipartisan criticism. Wheeler also moved to withdraw the United States from or weaken enforcement of international environmental commitments. While the formal withdrawal from the [[Paris Agreement]] had already been announced under Pruitt, Wheeler oversaw the practical unwinding of domestic policy frameworks designed to meet Paris targets, reinforcing the administration's signal that [[Climate Change]] mitigation was not a priority. Throughout this agenda Wheeler maintained a low public profile, avoiding the conspicuous spending, security-detail controversies, and ethics complaints that had destroyed [[Scott Pruitt]]. This temperamental contrast was itself strategic: the same [[Deregulation]] program advanced with less political friction. Environmental groups called Wheeler "the most effective EPA administrator at dismantling environmental protections in the agency's history" — a backhanded compliment that captured his operational competence. ## Climate change positioning Wheeler's public statements on [[Climate Change]] were carefully calibrated. At his confirmation hearing he acknowledged climate change as real and human-influenced but declined to call it a crisis, saying "I would not call it the greatest crisis" but "a huge issue that needs to be addressed globally." This hedging language allowed him to avoid the outright [[Climate Change Denialism]] of figures like [[James Inhofe]] while still pursuing an agenda that environmental groups said was functionally denialist in its policy outcomes. His EPA deprioritized climate science, removed climate data from agency websites, and sidelined career scientists who pushed for stronger action. ## Post-EPA career After leaving the EPA in January 2021, Wheeler was briefly nominated by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin in 2022 to serve as Virginia's Secretary of Natural and Historic Resources. The nomination was rejected by a bipartisan committee vote in the state Senate, with several Republicans joining Democrats in opposition — a rare rebuke that reflected ongoing controversy over his environmental record. The rejection demonstrated that Wheeler's record had become toxic even in a purple state governed by a Republican — a political ceiling that Pruitt's scandals had not produced, because Wheeler's policy outcomes were harder to dismiss than Pruitt's personal misconduct. Wheeler has since remained active in conservative policy circles, consulting on energy and environmental regulatory strategy. His EPA tenure is frequently cited in [[Project 2025]] planning documents as a model for how a future Republican administration should approach environmental deregulation — methodically, with legal precision, and without the self-inflicted wounds that derailed Pruitt. Wheeler's career remains significant in the KB as a case study in how the [[Revolving Door]] operates in environmental policy. The pipeline from [[Lobbying]] for [[Koch Industries]] and Murray Energy to running the [[EPA]] to state-level appointments illustrates the institutional infrastructure of [[Deregulation]] as a policy project, not merely an ideological preference. His tenure also demonstrates a strategic lesson: that quiet, technically proficient deregulators can accomplish more than flamboyant ones, precisely because they generate less opposition. ## KB significance Wheeler connects several major KB threads. His career maps the [[Revolving Door]] between the fossil-fuel [[Energy Sector]], Capitol Hill, and the regulatory agencies those industries seek to influence. His tenure at the EPA under [[Donald Trump]] sits within the broader [[Deregulation]] arc that includes [[Scott Pruitt]], the [[Heritage Foundation]]'s regulatory agenda, and the second-term push under [[Project 2025]] to further reduce EPA authority. His work under [[James Inhofe]] links him to the [[Climate Change Denialism]] genealogy, while his policy outcomes — weakened [[Clean Air Act]] enforcement, narrowed [[Clean Water Act]] jurisdiction, stalled [[PFAS]] action — form the substantive record of what [[Regulatory Capture]] looks like in practice at the federal level. ## See also - [[EPA]] - [[Scott Pruitt]] - [[Deregulation]] - [[Regulatory Capture]] - [[Revolving Door]] - [[Climate Change]] - [[Climate Change Denialism]] - [[Mercury and Air Toxics Standards]] - [[PFAS]] - [[West Virginia v. EPA]] - [[Paris Agreement]] - [[Lobbying]] - [[Clean Air Act]] - [[Clean Water Act]] - [[Energy Sector]] - [[Koch Industries]] - [[Project 2025]] - [[Trump 1.0 Cabinet Hub]]