A coalition of 70 House Democrats – led by Raúl Grijalva of Arizona and Frank Pallone of New Jersey – sent a scathing letter to President Donald Trump last week that criticizes recent revisions of Obama-era oil and natural gas methane regulations. In the opening two paragraphs of the letter, the coalition claims that,

“For nearly two years, your administration has executed a strategy of ignoring threats to public health, abusing taxpayer resources, and undermining efforts to combat climate change. While these efforts have taken the form of multiple federal actions across many agencies, the recent proposed evisceration of methane emission controls by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will accomplish all three of these in one fell swoop.

“The EPA’s proposal to weaken methane leak inspection and repair requirements for oil and gas operations and BLM’s rule gutting measures designed to reduce methane venting, flaring and leaks from oil and gas operations on public lands will inflict tremendous harm on American citizens and on the air and water on which we all rely.”

Clearly driven more by politics than science, the letter is littered with misleading claims and characterizations that exaggerate potential environmental impacts and downplay the very real economic consequences the previous versions of the rules would have yielded.

Read about the most egregious claims made in the letter, followed by the facts on EIDClimate.org.