by Mike Andrew - SGN Staff Writer

Donald Trump - who successfully challenged the Republican establishment to win his party's nomination and the Democratic establishment to win the presidency - is now challenging science itself with two controversial picks to head important federal agencies.

On December 7 Trump announced that he would nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Later the same day, the Trump team floated the name of Jim O'Neill to run the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Curiously enough, Pruitt is currently suing the agency he has been nominated to lead, on behalf his state and local oil interests, who bitterly resent the Obama administration's regulation of fossil fuels.

According to the New York Times, Pruitt allied with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott - now the governor - as early as 2014 to craft a legal challenge to Obama's climate change policies. Their efforts resulted in a 28-state lawsuit against the administration's guidelines.

The case is pending in federal court and is expected to make its way eventually to the US Supreme Court, by which time the high court may contain at least one Trump appointee.

Like Trump, who once said that climate change is a 'hoax' concocted by China to limit US industrial growth, Pruitt refuses to believe the scientific consensus on climate change.

In May Pruitt wrote an article in the conservative National Review magazine arguing that the science behind climate change 'is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.'

Jim O'Neill, who may head up the FDA, is a friend of alt-right homocon Peter Thiel and managing director of Thiel's investment firm, Mithril Capital Management.

Like Thiel, O'Neill bitterly resents government regulations and has argued against the FDA monitoring drug efficacy.

'We should reform FDA so there is approving drugs after their sponsors have demonstrated safety - and let people start using them, at their own risk, but not much risk of safety,' O'Neill said in a speech at an August 2014 conference called Rejuvenation Biotechnology. 'Let's prove efficacy after they've been legalized.'

Both appointments would require Senate confirmation, and the Pruitt appointment in particular has stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy, but it remains to be seen if Senate Democrats have the political will to try to block Trump's appointments.

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