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‘Yet another dishonest, fake news claim courtesy of the New York Times’: EPA head

January 13, 2026 | | Print Article

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lee Zeldin slammed the New York Times on Monday for allegedly publishing fake news.

The Times reported earlier that day that the EPA had decided to stop calculating “the health benefits of reducing air pollution” and stop “using the cost estimates of avoided asthma attacks and premature deaths to justify clean-air rules.”

“Under President Trump, the E.P.A. plans to stop tallying gains from the health benefits caused by curbing two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone,” the Times’ report continued.

This decades-old practice that the Trump administration is allegedly eliminating reportedly assigns a dollar value to the lives saved by draconian pollution regulations.

This shift away from this would “make it easier to repeal limits on these pollutants from coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills, and other industrial facilities across the country,” according to the Times.

But according to Zeldin, it’s yet another fallacious narrative from the Pravda establishment press:

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In a statement published to social media, the EPA administrator called the Times’ report “another dishonest, fake news claim.”

“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 added.

“The Times’ unyielding commitment to destroying journalism is second to none,” he scathingly concluded.

An EPA spokesperson has also dismissed the Times’ reporting.

“EPA, like the agency always has, is still considering the impacts that PM2.5 and ozone emissions have on human health, but the agency will not be monetizing the impacts at this time,” the spokesperson said.

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“Not monetizing DOES NOT equal not considering or not valuing the human health impact. EPA is fully committed to its core mission of protecting human health and the environment,” they added.

The Times’ reporting also inspired criticism from Trump-Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell:

The Times, meanwhile, has only doubled down.

“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 paper said in a statement. “An EPA spokeswoman did not deny this when we asked for comment, and our reporting remains accurate.”

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This pushback, shared on social media, inspired another round of clapbacks from everyday members of the Republican right.

Look (*Language warning):

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This isn’t the first move the Trump administration has made to rid the EPA of its liberal ways.

“In May, the White House ordered agencies to stop considering the economic damage caused by climate change when crafting regulations, except in cases where it is ‘plainly required’ by law,” according to the Times.

“That directive effectively shelved a powerful tool, known as the ‘social cost of carbon,’ that the Biden administration had used to strengthen limits on carbon emissions from cars and power plants,” the reporting continued.

But critics on the right have dismissed the very notion of the “social costs of carbon.”

Vivek Saxena
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