Don’t you dare cite reports from the EPA, says the EPA

In a surprising turn of events, Trump administration officials are arguing with media outlets over the validity of their own actions. 

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin called out The New York Times earlier this week for “dishonest, fake news” in its recent reporting. 

The outlet wrote a bombshell report on newly released EPA documents which state that the agency will no longer consider the potential lives that could be saved when making rules and regulations surrounding air pollution. 

Instead, the Times reported, the EPA will solely consider the impacts to industry. 

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“Not only is the EXACT OPPOSITE of this headline the actual truth, but the Times is already VERY WELL AWARE that EPA will still be considering lives saved when setting pollution limits,” Zeldin tweeted. 

However, the outlet responded with its own rebuff in the comments.

"Our reporting on internal EPA documents found that the agency is no longer calculating the health benefits of reducing fine particulate matter and ozone pollution when writing clean-air regulations,” the Times’ PR team wrote. “An EPA spokeswoman did not deny this when we asked for comment and our reporting remains accurate,” the outlet concluded.

On one hand, this administration’s blatant denial of facts sourced from its own reports adds to the unclear and harmful new policies that will directly impact people’s health. 

On the other hand, Zeldin has a public track record of prioritizing businesses and capital over humans since taking on this role.

The former New York congressman said during a Senate hearing in May 2025 that he intended to use his position to aid in making the U.S. the “AI capital of the world.” And if you’ve been looking closely at how the Trump regime is carrying this out, it includes beefing up energy production through less regulations while pushing more oil, uranium, coal, and even nuclear energy ventures. 

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And as part of his secondary mission of cost-cutting, Zeldin has already ripped away thousands of grants for environmental projects—some of which were already in progress. One of Zeldin’s moves to supposedly care for human health included pulling EPA funding out of Flint, Michigan, where the concern for safe drinking water still remained. 

When it comes to the impact of air quality on human health, though, we are looking at an EPA chief who has said that he doubts the actual negative impacts of greenhouse gases. Zeldin also spelled out his plan from the beginning. 

At the start of his new gig, he penned an op-ed detailing how he intends to drive a “dagger” through the “heart of climate change religion.”

So, if anything, Zeldin’s EPA only seems to be doing everything he promised it would. The New York Times’ supposed crime was putting the dubious plan into digestible words. 

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