The New York Times’ Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during President Donald Trump’s tenure is a 669 percent increase over EPA requests during former President Barack Obama’s tenure, according to a report released Wednesday.
The federal government’s FOIA database revealed that mainstream media FOIA applications for Trump administration’s EPA skyrocketed after the American people elected Donald Trump to the presidency.
In one instance, the New York Times made only 13 FOIA requests during the second term of former President Barack Obama, sending three in 2013, one in 2014, seven in 2015, and two in 2016. During Trump’s first year in office, FOIA requests nearly quadrupled, when the Times sent 59 FOIA requests for the EPA:
FOIA requests from mainstream media outlets to EPA drastically spiked in 2017 when @realDonaldTrump took office. New @FreeBeacon analysis: https://t.co/n4xQleLu70 pic.twitter.com/apxl1um5Co
— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) March 20, 2019
New York Times reporters sent the EPA 100 FOIA requests since Trump took office, which amounts to a 669 percent increase compared to the requests it made to Obama’s EPA during his second term. Washington Post reporters sent only one FOIA request during Obama’s second term and have sent 43 requests to the environmental agency since Trump became president.
Other news publications also took a large interest in transparency at the EPA since Trump took office, which includes:
- Politico sent 198 FOIAs since Trump took office but only sent 15 requests during Obama’s last four years in office.
- The Hill sent 20 requests in Obama’s second term and 67 requests since Trump took office.
- CNN sent 25 FOIA requests during Obama’s second term, 47 since Trump took office.
- BuzzFeed requested information 18 times in Obama’s second term, 38 when Trump became president.
- ABC News sent the second-term Obama EPA FOIAs four times and sent Trump 32 FOIAs since he became president.
Only Bloomberg sent a consistent number of FOIA request in the second term of Obama’s administration, when the EPA proposed major climate change rules such as the Clean Power Plan, and its Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule. During Donald Trump’s administration, the EPA has worked to unravel much of Obama’s climate agenda, which includes repealing the Clean Power Plan, WOTUS, and withdrawing from the Paris Climate accord.
EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler told Breitbart News in an interview in March that many mainstream media sources, leftist politicians, and other environmental activists continue to oppose the Trump EPA because of their success in both deregulating and cleaning up the environment.
“We are moving forward, we are successful, and there are some people that don’t want us to be successful, people who support the Green New Deal, people who don’t want the ‘energy domination’ we’re having,” Wheeler told Breitbart News. “You know, the natural gas we produce, the coal, the oil that we produced this year that we’re exporting is more environmentally conscious mining of those fossil fuels than anywhere else in the world.”
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