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Pruitt Arranged Sweetheart Condo Deal Directly with Fossil Fuel Lobbyist
Pruitt advocated for lobbyist’s interests during taxpayer-funded international trip.
WASHINGTON
It may be spring, but Scott Pruitt's scandals continue to snowball, as ABC News reported today that Pruitt worked directly with fossil fuel industry lobbyist Steven Hart to secure living arrangements in a townhouse owned by the same lobbyist's wife. According to ABC, Pruitt paid for just one room in an otherwise unoccupied townhouse and experts on government ethics are raising questions as to whether this was a fair market transaction. Meanwhile, former White House Ethics Czar Norm Eisen said Pruitt likely secured the property below market value, categorizing the deal as a major ethics violation.
Hart is the head of the DC lobbying firm Williams and Jensen, which specifically lobbies the EPA on Clean Air Act policies, according to ABC. Hart represents Cheniere Energy, the company that owns the only Liquid Natural Gas export plant that was active when Pruitt travelled to Morocco last year on a taxpayer funded trip to tout liquid natural gas. Hart's firm also represents the American Automotive Policy Council, which includes automakers such as Ford, who has been lobbying Pruitt to roll back the clean car standards. Pruitt is expected to side with Ford and begin rolling back the standards in the coming days.
While living in the home, Hart continued to have dinner parties and functions, raising questions about whether political fundraisers were held in the House while Pruitt was there. Hart and his firm have donated more than $600,000 to political candidates this year.
Meanwhile, White House officials are reportedly "dismayed" at Pruitt's continued scandals, raising the prospect that Pruitt could be the next cabinet member tossed out.
In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune released the following statement:
"Let's get this straight: Scott Pruitt got a sweetheart deal on a D.C. condo directly from a fossil fuel lobbyist, then wasted thousands in taxpayer dollars pushing that lobbyist's agenda on a trip to Morocco. This deal stinks like the swamp Scott Pruitt is mired in. Pruitt's wanton corruption doesn't just ignore the rule of law and clear ethical boundaries, it threatens the health of our families. The fossil fuel lobbyists Pruitt is taking favors and marching orders from are telling him to throw out the safeguards that keep our air and water safe from their pollution, and our kids are at risk as a result. Pruitt does not care about the law, he does not care about taxpayers, and he does not care about our families. He must be fired immediately."
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
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Hegseth Says 6 More Men Killed in Latest Boat Bombings
At least 76 people have been killed in 19 US attacks on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since early September.
Nov 10, 2025
Six people were killed Sunday in US military strikes on what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed were boats smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, bringing the total death toll from all such reported attacks to at least 76 since early September.
"Yesterday, at the direction of President [Donald] Trump, two lethal kinetic strikes were conducted on two vessels operated by designated terrorist organizations. These vessels were known by our intelligence to be associated with illicit narcotics smuggling, were carrying narcotics, and were transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the eastern Pacific," Hegseth said Monday on social media without providing evidence to support his claim.
"Both strikes were conducted in international waters and three male narco-terrorists were aboard each vessel. All six were killed," he added. "No US forces were harmed. Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people."
Sunday's attacks raised the death toll in the Trump administration's nine-week campaign to at least 76 people in 19 attacks in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. The US strikes have come amid Trump's deployment of warships and thousands of troops off the coast of Venezuela and follow the president's approval of covert CIA action and threats to attack inside the oil-rich country.
Last week, Republicans in the US Senate rejected a bipartisan war powers resolution aimed at stopping the Trump administration from continuing its bombing of alleged drug boats or attacking Venezuela without lawmakers’ assent, as required by law.
Trump administration officials have admitted that they aren't attempting to identify people aboard boats before or after bombing them. Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) recently told CNN that Pentagon officials briefed her “that they do not need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes."
Jacobs also said that the administration is not making any effort to imprison survivors of the strikes or prosecute them, “because they could not satisfy the evidentiary burden.”
In the past, drug trafficking in the Caribbean and Pacific has been treated by the US government as a law enforcement issue, with the Coast Guard and other agencies sometimes intercepting boats and arresting those on board if evidence was found, granting them a day in court.
Leaders in Venezuela, Colombia, and other nations; United Nations officials; human rights groups; and Democratic US lawmakers are among those who have condemned the boat bombings as extrajudicial assassination, murder, and war crimes.
While some residents of the Venezuelan villages from which the targeted boats departed have said that many of the men killed in the strikes were running drugs, regional officials and relatives of victims have asserted that numerous men slain in the attacks were not narco-traffickers.
According to an MSNBC investigation published last week, the identities of up to 50 strike victims remain publicly unknown. In a rare display of congressional bipartisanship, Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Mike Turner (R-Ohio), Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), and Jason Crow (D-Col.) last week sent a letter to Trump seeking clarification on the administration's legal reasoning for the strikes and asking, "What evidence confirms that those killed were cartel operatives, rather than coerced, deceived, or trafficked civilians?"
"We strongly support the effort to reduce the flow of narcotics into this country," the lawmakers wrote. "This effort, like every action the United States military takes, must be done within the legal, moral, and ethical framework that sets us apart from our adversaries."
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Endorsing Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, Sanders Expands Push for 'Fighters' for Working Class in Senate
"We don’t need more corporate Democrats in the Senate. We need Peggy Flanagan, who’ll fight for working people."
Nov 10, 2025
Calling for more Democratic lawmakers who have “the guts to stand up for working people," Sen. Bernie Sanders weighed in on another US Senate primary on Monday, hours after a handful of Democrats agreed to reopen the federal government without Republican concessions on healthcare.
Sanders (I-Vt.), who earlier this year announced his support for Democratic Senate candidates Graham Platner in Maine and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, has now formally endorsed Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan's candidacy for the US Senate.
In his endorsement, Sanders said that the Senate needs lawmakers who will stand up "against the billionaires and the corporate interests," and argued that Flanagan understands the needs of working-class people personally due in part to her own blue-collar background.
"Peggy knows what it is to struggle," he said. "She was raised by a hard-working single mother who needed [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] to help put food on the table and Medicaid for healthcare. And she’s dedicated her career to fighting for working families."
Sanders also hailed Flanagan's accomplishments as both lieutenant governor and Minnesota state legislator, and he said she would work to fight for progressive priorities on a national level.
"Peggy fought to raise the minimum wage and she got it done," he said. "She fought for paid family leave and she got it done. We need fighters who are from the working class and for the working class here in the Senate. Peggy will fight for Medicare for All, to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, and to address the crises we face in childcare, education, and housing."
Sanders concluded his endorsement by arguing that "we don’t need more corporate Democrats in the Senate. We need Peggy Flanagan, who’ll fight for working people."
Progressive political consultant Rebecca Katz hailed Sanders' endorsements of Flanagan, Platner, and El-Sayed, whom she described on X as "three good candidates who understand the stakes and know how to fight back."
Flanagan is running to replace retiring Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who has been serving in the Senate ever since former Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) resigned in 2018. Flanagan will be facing off against Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn), a centrist Democrat who has several endorsements from the Democratic establishment, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
According to Minnesota Reformer, Flanagan has also scored endorsements from Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who both stumped for her at the Minnesota State Fair this past summer.
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After 'Bonkers' 5th Circuit Ruling, Supreme Court to Hear Mail-In Ballot Case
While experts hope the justices will reverse an "objectively insane" appellate decision, a ruling in favor of the Republican National Committee could reduce the rights of Americans who vote by mail.
Nov 10, 2025
As President Donald Trump on Monday pardoned leaders who tried to overturn his 2020 loss, the US Supreme Court took up the national Republican Party's argument that counting mailed ballots shortly after Election Day violates federal law.
Voting by mail has long been a target of the GOP president, who has falsely claimed that the practice fuels voter fraud. This case concerns a Mississippi law that allows mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted as long as they arrive within five business days, which three Trump appointees on the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit struck down last year.
That lawsuit was brought by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Mississippi Libertarian Party. Another Republican, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch‚ is asking the nation's top court to reject the 5th Circuit's decision, arguing that it "defies statutory text, conflicts with this court's precedent, and—if left to stand—will have destabilizing nationwide ramifications."
The Supreme Court—which has a conservative supermajority that includes three Trump appointees—agreed to hear Watson v. RNC and decide "whether the federal Election Day statutes preempt a state law that allows ballots that are cast by federal Election Day to be received by election officials after that day."
The Supreme Court will review an objectively insane 5th Circuit decision that prohibited states from counting ballots that were mailed before Election Day but arrive shortly after. (More than half the states have such laws.) www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...
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— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) November 10, 2025 at 9:44 AM
The Associated Press pointed out Monday that "Mississippi is among 18 states and the District of Columbia that accept mailed ballots received after Election Day as long as the ballots are postmarked on or before that date," and "an additional 14 states allow the counting of late-arriving ballots from some eligible voters, including overseas US service members and their families."
Legal experts have condemned the appellate decision as "awful" and "bonkers." The justices are expected to hear arguments early next year and issue a ruling by the end of June, months before the crucial midterm elections.
National Vote At Home Institute executive director Barbara Smith Warner welcomed their decision to take the case and potentially reverse the 5th Circuit's "upside-down" opinion, telling Democracy Docket: "The idea that a ballot that is postmarked on or by Election Day and received afterwards... is like voting after Election Day? That is ridiculous."
Unfortunately I am here to tell you: it's time to worry about what the Supreme Court is going to do to mail ballots postmarked by election day that arrive after election day, in states across the country. This could be enormous.www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
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— jen rice (@jenrice.bsky.social) November 10, 2025 at 11:19 AM
Alexia Kemerling, director of accessible democracy at the American Association of People with Disabilities, was also hopeful.
"We really hope that the Supreme Court takes the responsibility seriously to make sure that every voter can use their power," she said. "'The millions of voters with disabilities who cannot vote in person or voters who are overseas who cannot vote in person—this is their only way to participate in the system. They should not be disenfranchised for the ways that our system moves slowly."
The New York Times noted that Watson v. RNC "is a potential blockbuster and adds to the court's other elections and voting cases for the term, which include a case about who can sue to challenge Illinois' mail-in ballot rules and a challenge to the Louisiana congressional district map that could gut a remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act."
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