EPA Refuses to Disclose Talking Points for Meeting with Fossil Fuel Advocates

Washington, D.C., August 4, 2025 - Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin met with longtime fossil fuel advocates Alex Epstein, Ted Ellis, and Marc Marie in a March 2025 meeting to discuss “novel ideas to help Administrator Zeldin deliver on President Trump’s energy dominance agenda,” according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the National Security Archive. But the agency refused to release talking points prepared for Zeldin in advance of that meeting, asserting that their release “could result in foreseeable harm” under FOIA exemption (b)(5), which allows agencies to withhold “pre-decisional” information related to the “deliberative process.” (Document 1)

The documents and partial documents released in this case show that the 30-minute, administrator-level meeting first reported by E&E news was listed on Zeldin’s calendar as “Meeting w/ Energy Talking Points,” the name of Epstein’s controversial Substack blog that propagates pro-fossil fuel industry information.[1] (Document 2) Three additional Energy Talking Points documents released by EPA lay out detailed strategies for how the EPA and Congress should comply with President Trump’s Executive Order 14154 on “Unleashing American Energy.” One document was “classified”—presumably by Epstein himself—as “confidential – do not share without permission.” (Documents 3-5).

Two of the Energy Talking Points papers released by EPA in response to the Archive’s FOIA—“Suggested EPA Actions” (Document 3) and “9 transformative policies to promote energy abundance” (Document 5)—advise Zeldin to “re-examine the agency’s 2009 ‘endangerment finding,’” the landmark opinion that sets greenhouse gas emissions standards. Last week, Zeldin announced a proposal to rescind the endangerment finding.[2]

The National Security Archive has filed an appeal for release of the documents prepared for Zeldin ahead of the meeting, arguing that the agency provided no justification for invoking the FOIA’s (b)(5) exemption to withhold the talking points and has not adequately described the “foreseeable harm” that would follow from the release of the information.

FOIA exemption (b)(5) allows government agencies to withhold from the public any privileged “interagency or intra-agency" communications, including records related to the “deliberative process,” such as any record that the agency deems to be a “draft.” Originally intended to prevent government employees from “working in a fishbowl,” agency invocation of what has come to be known as the “withhold it because you want to” exemption has skyrocketed over the years.[3] Specifically, the “foreseeable harm” standard—which EPA’s determination is predicated on—states that an agency shall withhold information only if “the agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest protected by one of the nine exemptions that FOIA enumerates.”[4] The standard was codified under the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016.[5]

The endangerment finding asserts that heat-trapping emissions are a danger to public health and welfare by fueling climate change and gives the EPA the ability to regulate climate pollution under the Clean Air Act.[6] Since President Trump’s inauguration, climate scientists and environmental activists have expressed concern that the EPA would roll back major regulatory cornerstones like the endangerment finding, especially after President Trump asked Zeldin in February to determine whether or not the agency could abandon the scientific finding.[7] Zeldin’s proposed retraction of the 16-year-old scientific finding would severely weaken the government’s ability to regulate climate pollution.

Author of multiple pro-fossil fuel books including The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and Fossil Future, Epstein founded the for-profit think tank Center for Industrial Progress and has argued that fossil fuels have made “hurricanes like Hurricanes Helene and Milton better, not worse.”[8] Epstein characterized COP29—the annual climate conference held in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2024—as “immoral” for seeking net-zero pledges.[9] In recent months, Epstein has privately and publicly lobbied Congress against subsidies for renewable energy technologies and electric vehicles, playing an “enormous” role in influencing House Republicans during negotiations over the budget reconciliation package.[10]

The Epstein group’s presentation advises the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation to rescind and replace “unachievable” tailpipe emissions standards with “achievable standards” and to revoke Greenhouse Gas Emissions standards for power plants. The talking points also recommend that the U.S. government withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), something that the administration has not yet done. Epstein’s “EV Freedom Plan” outlines “every policy that must go” to achieve “true EV freedom” and encourages federal agencies to “minimize any EV subsidies that Congress doesn’t repeal.” (Document 4)

Declassified email correspondence between Zeldin and EPA Scheduling Director Ashley Brown indicates that fossil fuel advocates Theodore Ellis and Marc Marie also attended the meeting. (Document 2) At the time, Ellis, a former House Republican Study Committee staffer, was listed as Vice President of Government Affairs for another Epstein-founded fossil fuel advocacy group, the Energy Freedom Fund, although he is currently also the director of the America First Policy Institute’s “Power America” program.[11] Marie—a former Justice Department and Interior Department Official—was listed as President of the Center for Environmental Accountability, a non-profit organization “devoted to educating the public and government on the importance of transparency and accountability in environmental and energy policy,” according to the group’s website.[12]

The EPA’s refusal to release talking points for Zeldin’s meeting with fossil fuel advocates raises serious concerns about the Trump administration’s continuing effort to restrict public access to important information about fundamental changes to U.S. energy policy, reflecting the administration’s deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. The denial under FOIA exemption (b)(5)—the “most abused” FOIA exemption—demonstrates how excessive agency secrecy is intertwined with the administration’s efforts to erode the EPA’s regulatory enforcement mechanisms and further calls into question President Trump’s promise to be the “most transparent administration in history.”[13]