"Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump's pick to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has fought President Barack Obama’s measures to curb climate change at every turn as attorney general of Oklahoma. Now he is hoping to take apart Obama's environmental legacy from the inside out, a task that could prove tougher than it sounds."

"President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice of a fossil-fuel advocate and climate-change denier to head the Environmental Protection Agency comes at a moment when the American energy market has already shifted away from the most polluting fossil fuels, driven more by investors and economics than by federal regulations."

"The House [Thursday] afternoon passed water projects legislation and a continuing resolution to keep the government funded into next year, but the Senate path is unclear."

"The oil giant, seemingly emboldened by a federal judge's ruling it can poke into a state AG's investigation, wants 350.org's records, too. The group is refusing."

"Lawmakers negotiating an energy reform package have run out of time to come to a deal. Speaker Paul Ryan’s office said Wednesday that Congress will not pass an energy reform bill this session, scrapping two years of work lawmakers had hoped would yield the first major energy package in a decade."

"The federal government on Wednesday banned mountaintop coal mining from more than 500 miles of ridges in East Tennessee’s Cumberland Mountains, handing a victory to the state and to conservationists who have long sought to protect the region’s forests and streams."

"Missouri’s largest peach producer has filed a lawsuit against Monsanto Co., alleging that the biotech company bears responsibility for illegal herbicide use suspected of causing widespread crop damage in southeast Missouri and neighboring states."

"President-elect Donald Trump is planning to pick Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to run the EPA, putting one of the agency's most hostile critics and a skeptic of climate change science at its helm, sources close to the transition said Wednesday."

"A federal judge reaffirmed an order that Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey must submit to questioning by lawyers for ExxonMobil over her investigation of the oil industry giant."

"One coal-state senator has vowed to block a must-pass spending bill to keep the government open unless Congress approves a fix for a pension and health care fund for retired coal miners that faces default by the end of the month."