Trump’s EPA Chief Chews Out NY Times After Email Leak Reveals Plan to Abandon Decades-Old Policy: ‘Cute BS Headline’

(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File) (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Lee Zeldin furiously lashed out at the New York Times after it reported on leaked emails that revealed plans to abandon a decades-old practice that assigns a dollar value to lives saved by pollution rules.

The shift, first reported by Times on Monday, would end the EPA’s long-standing use of “value of a statistical life” calculations when weighing new limits on harmful pollutants.

While the agency would continue counting compliance costs to industry, it would no longer quantify the public health benefits of rules aimed at reducing fine particulate matter and ozone, pollutants linked to asthma, lung disease, and premature death.

The change comes as the EPA under Zeldin reportedly moves to slash hundreds of scientists from its research and development office.

The policy shift 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.

The report prompted an angry response from Zeldin, who took to X on Monday to accuse the paper of deliberate distortion and defended the move:

“Cute BS headline. Entirely untrue, but the NY Times won’t ever let the truth get in the way of their desire to dumb down their readers,” he wrote. “The Times posted this ENTIRELY AWARE that EPA will continue considering lives saved when setting pollution limits.”

An EPA spokesperson echoed that defense: “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. 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.”

The Times hit back beneath Zeldin’s tirade, insisting its “reporting remains accurate”:

pic.twitter.com/AK7pMD0VXL

— NYTimes Communications (@NYTimesPR) January 13, 2026

The backlash spread even further, with Trump-appointed Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell weighing in to call the Times report “fake news” and claiming its journalists’ “reputations have imploded.”

Grenell previously took aim at legacy media outlets that he said were trying to discourage artists from performing at his venue, following its Trump rebrand.