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President-elect Donald Trump has selected Chris Wright as the energy secretary for his upcoming administration, the Associated Press reported on Saturday (November 16).
Wright is the CEO of Liberty Energy, the world's second-largest fracking services company and among the most outspoken critics of efforts to combat climate change.
"There is no climate crisis, and we're not in the midst of an energy transition either," Wright said in a video shared on his LinkedIn account last year.
Wright criticized what he referred to as a "top-down" approach by Democrats and left-wing groups to combat climate change, which he said was "collapsing under its own weight."
Trump's decision to select Wright as the energy secretary came hours after he selected Karoline Leavitt as his White House press secretary. Leavitt, 27, worked as an assistant press secretary for the first Trump administration, as well as the national press secretary on his campaign, and will become the youngest person to ever hold the title of White House press secretary once she assumes the role in January.
Trump has made several other selections that have sparked immediate criticism including pegging former Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an outspoken vaccine skeptic, as his administration's secretary of health; former FOX News host Pete Hegseth as the secretary of defense; and former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who was at the center of a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations engaging in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepting improper gifts, dispensing special privileges and favors and seeking to obstruct government investigations, as his attorney general.