New York Times climate-policy reporter Lisa Friedman explains her beat as covering “how our warming planet affects vulnerable communities and to understand the economic and political challenges involved in curbing greenhouse gases.” [some emphasis, links added]
In other words, her beat is all about forcing politicians to respond to an alleged “crisis.”
So there was outrage when President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency eliminated the dubious Obama-era Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, which “served as a prerequisite for regulating emissions from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines.”
Friedman embellished the whole affair to make Trump out to be the enemy of Mother Earth in a February 12 screed: “Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change.” Friedman began:
“President Trump on Thursday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.
“The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather.
“Led by a president who refers to climate change as a “hoax,” the administration is essentially saying that the vast majority of scientists around the world are wrong and that a hotter planet is not the menace that decades of research shows it to be.”
Science vs. Trump. It wouldn’t be the first time they drew this cartoon.
On Wednesday, the anti-Trump headline of choice was “As Trump Obliterates Climate Efforts, States Try to Fill the Gap.”
Friedman’s rant, of course, was completely false in presenting Science as unanimous, as American Compass managing editor Drew Holden pointed out on X:
“This is it. The worst legacy media headline I’ve ever seen. A blatant lie. A deeply political issue. Entirely lacking context (‘bedrock’ for something passed in 2009!). World-is-ending alarmism. Trump derangement. Nails everything wrong w/ the press.”
The “endangerment finding” effectively gave the EPA carte blanche authority to impose sweeping restrictions on the economy based on arbitrary assessments of dangers to public health, regardless of harms to economic stability.
As former Heritage Foundation Scholars Kevin Dayaratna and Diana Furchtgott-Roth summarized in a July 30, 2025, report, the Obama-EPA’s “endangerment finding” was “based largely on studies compiled by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), rather than on its own scientific assessments.”
As Holden concluded, repealing the “endangerment finding” will “stop unelected bureaucrats from using climate change as a catchall to shape policy in harmful ways.”
Legacy media is really, really bad at reporting about climate issues. There might be no subject where their bias is more apparent, their funding sources more monolithic, and their willingness to consider other ideas more absent.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) February 17, 2026
But Friedman, true to the Times brand, falsely stated that “For nearly 17 years, the E.P.A. had relied on the bedrock finding to justify regulations that limit carbon dioxide, methane and other pollution from oil and gas wells, tailpipes, smokestacks and other sources that burn fossil fuels?”
Whose “bedrock finding” was it, Friedman? She doesn’t clearly say.
The assertion that “the vast majority of scientists” support drastic government action is a lie, as EPA administrator Lee Zeldin argued in an X-post targeting another Times piece battering the Trump administration along Friedman’s logic.
This New York Times hack “reporter” knows perfectly well that EPA’s vehicle standards for criteria pollutants and hazardous air pollutants remain. The objective here is to dumb down the Times’ readers as much as possible with absolute lies. pic.twitter.com/98N4S94rro
— Lee Zeldin (@epaleezeldin) February 16, 2026
“EPA’s vehicle standards for criteria pollutants and hazardous air pollutants remain. The objective here is to dumb down the Times’ readers as much as possible with absolute lies,” Zeldin rebuked.
As Dayaratna and Furchtgott-Roth reported, there is “No Scientific Consensus on CO2 Harm.” Friedman’s reasoning is likely based on the phony notion that 97 percent of scientists have reached consensus on man-made climate change.
But Dayaratna and Furchtgott-Roth obliterated that claim:
“The misleading figure stems from a 2013 study in Environmental Research Letters that examines the abstracts of nearly 12,000 academic papers on climate change and global warming between 1991 and 2011. Of those papers, 66.4 percent did not express an opinion on anthropogenic warming, 32.6 percent endorsed it, 0.7 percent rejected it, and 0.3 percent were uncertain about the cause. Among the 33.6 percent expressing an opinion on man-made global warming, ‘97.1 percent endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming’ without commenting on danger or urgency. That is about a third of the total polled, not 97 percent.”
And that’s certainly not a “majority,” as Friedman insinuated.
In fact, Heartland Institute’s H. Sterling Burnett suggested that the finding was itself potentially illegal under the Clean Air Act.
“Concerning the scientific basis of the endangerment finding, from the outset it was clear carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) did not qualify as pollutants under the Clean Air Act (CAA) as written or intended by Congress,” Burnett argued on September 23, 2025.
Clean Air Act co-author Rep. John Dingell stating that Congress didn’t think SCOTUS would be “stupid enough” to allow EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. 2/ pic.twitter.com/k9TsVYgG3a
— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) February 23, 2026
And of course, Friedman and her Times’ climate-activist caucus don’t want to focus on the economic benefits of eliminating the Endangerment Finding, as the New York Post outlined on February 12.
“An economic impact analysis released Thursday night said the $1.3 trillion in savings [from eliminating the ‘endangerment finding’] included $1.1 trillion in reduced vehicle costs and $200 billion in avoided electric vehicle expenses, including chargers and other equipment.”
But Friedman simply dismissed the overarching number by kvetching that the Trump administration “has declined to explain how it arrived at that estimate.”
Perhaps Friedman should have waited to read the EPA’s economic impact analysis to be released the same day of her report, er, agitprop? Oh well.
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