New York Instances climate-policy reporter Lisa Friedman explains her beat as overlaying “how our warming planet impacts susceptible communities and to know the financial and political challenges concerned in curbing greenhouse gases.” [some emphasis, links added]
In different phrases, her beat is all about forcing politicians to answer an alleged “disaster.”
So there was outrage when President Donald Trump’s Environmental Safety Company eradicated the doubtful Obama-era Greenhouse Fuel Endangerment Discovering, which “served as a prerequisite for regulating emissions from new motor autos and new motorized vehicle engines.”
Friedman embellished the entire affair to make Trump out to be the enemy of Mom Earth in a February 12 screed: “Trump Administration Erases the Authorities’s Energy to Struggle Local weather Change.” Friedman started:
“President Trump on Thursday introduced he was erasing the scientific discovering that local weather change endangers human well being and the atmosphere, ending the federal authorities’s authorized authority to manage the air pollution that’s dangerously heating the planet.
“The motion is a key step in eradicating limits on carbon dioxide, methane and 4 different greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging warmth waves, droughts, wildfires and different excessive climate.
“Led by a president who refers to local weather change as a “hoax,” the administration is actually saying that the overwhelming majority of scientists around the globe are unsuitable and {that a} hotter planet will not be the menace that a long time of analysis reveals it to be.”
Science vs. Trump. It wouldn’t be the primary time they drew this cartoon.
On Wednesday, the anti-Trump headline of alternative was “As Trump Obliterates Local weather Efforts, States Attempt to Fill the Hole.”
Friedman’s rant, in fact, was fully false in presenting Science as unanimous, as American Compass managing editor Drew Holden identified on X:
“That is it. The worst legacy media headline I’ve ever seen. A blatant lie. A deeply political situation. Fully missing context (‘bedrock’ for one thing handed in 2009!). World-is-ending alarmism. Trump derangement. Nails the whole lot unsuitable w/ the press.”
The “endangerment discovering” successfully gave the EPA carte blanche authority to impose sweeping restrictions on the financial system based mostly on arbitrary assessments of risks to public well being, no matter harms to financial stability.
As former Heritage Basis Students Kevin Dayaratna and Diana Furchtgott-Roth summarized in a July 30, 2025, report, the Obama-EPA’s “endangerment discovering” was “based mostly largely on research compiled by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC), reasonably than by itself scientific assessments.”
As Holden concluded, repealing the “endangerment discovering” will “cease unelected bureaucrats from utilizing local weather change as a catchall to form coverage in dangerous methods.”
Legacy media is admittedly, actually unhealthy at reporting about local weather points. There is likely to be no topic the place their bias is extra obvious, their funding sources extra monolithic, and their willingness to think about different concepts extra absent.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) February 17, 2026
However Friedman, true to the Instances model, falsely said that “For almost 17 years, the E.P.A. had relied on the bedrock discovering to justify rules that restrict carbon dioxide, methane and different air pollution from oil and fuel wells, tailpipes, smokestacks and different sources that burn fossil fuels?”
Whose “bedrock discovering” was it, Friedman? She doesn’t clearly say.
The assertion that “the overwhelming majority of scientists” assist drastic authorities motion is a lie, as EPA administrator Lee Zeldin argued in an X-post concentrating on one other Instances piece battering the Trump administration alongside Friedman’s logic.
This New York Instances hack “reporter” is aware of completely nicely that EPA’s car requirements for standards pollution and dangerous air pollution stay. The target right here is to dumb down the Instances’ readers as a lot as potential with absolute lies. pic.twitter.com/98N4S94rro
— Lee Zeldin (@epaleezeldin) February 16, 2026
“EPA’s car requirements for standards pollution and dangerous air pollution stay. The target right here is to dumb down the Instances’ readers as a lot as potential with absolute lies,” Zeldin rebuked.
As Dayaratna and Furchtgott-Roth reported, there’s “No Scientific Consensus on CO2 Hurt.” Friedman’s reasoning is probably going based mostly on the phony notion that 97 p.c of scientists have reached consensus on man-made local weather change.
However Dayaratna and Furchtgott-Roth obliterated that declare:
“The deceptive determine stems from a 2013 examine in Environmental Analysis Letters that examines the abstracts of almost 12,000 educational papers on local weather change and world warming between 1991 and 2011. Of these papers, 66.4 p.c didn’t categorical an opinion on anthropogenic warming, 32.6 p.c endorsed it, 0.7 p.c rejected it, and 0.3 p.c have been unsure in regards to the trigger. Among the many 33.6 p.c expressing an opinion on man-made world warming, ‘97.1 p.c endorsed the consensus place that people are inflicting world warming’ with out commenting on hazard or urgency. That’s a few third of the full polled, not 97 p.c.”
And that’s definitely not a “majority,” as Friedman insinuated.
In truth, Heartland Institute’s H. Sterling Burnett steered that the discovering was itself doubtlessly unlawful underneath the Clear Air Act.
“Regarding the scientific foundation of the endangerment discovering, from the outset it was clear carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) didn’t qualify as pollution underneath the Clear Air Act (CAA) as written or meant by Congress,” Burnett argued on September 23, 2025.
Clear Air Act co-author Rep. John Dingell stating that Congress didn’t assume SCOTUS can be “silly sufficient” to permit EPA to control greenhouse gases. 2/ pic.twitter.com/k9TsVYgG3a
— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) February 23, 2026
And naturally, Friedman and her Instances’ climate-activist caucus don’t wish to deal with the financial advantages of eliminating the Endangerment Discovering, because the New York Put up outlined on February 12.
“An financial affect evaluation launched Thursday evening mentioned the $1.3 trillion in financial savings [from eliminating the ‘endangerment finding’] included $1.1 trillion in lowered car prices and $200 billion in averted electrical car bills, together with chargers and different gear.”
However Friedman merely dismissed the overarching quantity by kvetching that the Trump administration “has declined to elucidate the way it arrived at that estimate.”
Maybe Friedman ought to have waited to learn the EPA’s financial affect evaluation to be launched the identical day of her report, er, agitprop? Oh nicely.
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