Energy & Environment

Ivanka Trump to meet with EPA chief ahead of Paris climate pact decision

Ivanka Trump is planning to meet next week with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt about the Paris climate change agreement.

Ivanka, daughter and formal adviser to President Trump, will meet with Pruitt Tuesday, before a major meeting of top administration officials and Cabinet members to discuss the future of the Paris agreement, Axios reported Thursday.

She wants her father to stay in the accord, as part of her push for action against climate change.

{mosads}Her husband and fellow Trump adviser Jared Kushner agrees with her, as do Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Pruitt and strategist Stephen Bannon are among those who want Trump to exit the pact, as he promised to during last year’s campaign season.

Pruitt called the agreement “just a bad deal” in a March interview.

The Tuesday meeting is part of a series that administration officials have had in recent weeks to try to resolve the rift over the agreement, which was reached in 2015 with nearly 200 nations on board.

Under the pact, former President Barack Obama agreed to cut the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025. But the cuts are not binding.

Within the last week, White House officials have started to turn against staying in the pact. They’re concerned that the agreement would allow Trump to reduce Obama’s commitment, and that environmentalists could use the agreement in court to prevent Trump from rolling back climate regulations.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment Thursday on Axios’s report.