The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) apologized Thursday after mistakenly sending a news release that criticized President Trump’s executive order on climate change policies. 
 
 In the release, the EPA included quotes praising Trump’s Tuesday order to start undoing former President Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaReport: FCC chair to push for complete repeal of net neutrality Right way and wrong way Keystone XL pipeline clears major hurdle despite recent leak MORE’s climate actions, but it misattributed a negative statement to Sen. Shelley Moore Capito Shelley Moore CapitoOvernight Finance: Senate tax bill will include ObamaCare mandate repeal | Stock surge raises pressure for GOP to deliver tax reform | Ryan hints at short-term spending bill | House votes to overhaul federal flood insurance GOP senator: Congress may �?stumble’ on paying for Trump's infrastructure plan Overnight Tech: Dems want FCC chair investigated over Sinclair merger | Google faces state antitrust probe | Qualcomm rejects Broadcom offer | Startups criticize plan to tax employees' stocks MORE (R-W.Va.). 
 
 “With this Executive Order, President Trump has chosen to recklessly bury his head in the sand. Walking away from the Clean Power Plan and other climate initiatives, including critical resiliency projects is not just irresponsible — it’s irrational,” it quoted Capito as saying. 
 
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 “Today’s executive order calls into question America’s credibility and our commitment to tackling the greatest environmental challenge of our lifetime." 
 
 However, that statement actually came from Sen. Tom Carper Thomas (Tom) Richard CarperDemocrats scramble to contain Franken fallout Pruitt to testify on EPA agenda at House, Senate hearings Senate confirms top air regulator at EPA MORE (Del.), the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee and a harsh critic of Trump’s environmental agenda. 
 
 “Sen. Carper is happy to lend his words to a good cause,” a Carper spokeswoman said. 
 
 Capito, by contrast, cheered Trump’s order on Tuesday. 
 
 “Stopping this disastrous plan will preserve America’s coal industry, expand our manufacturing renaissance that is reliant upon affordable energy, and protect American families from unprecedented hikes in their electric bills,” she said in a statement. 
 
 Capito attended the signing ceremony Tuesday, and Trump thanked her in his speech. 
 
 The EPA sent out a corrected version of the release later Thursday morning, with Capito’s actual quote. 
 
 EPA spokesman John Konkus said the agency’s press office accidentally sent a draft version of the release. 
 
 “We apologize for the error and are making sure that our process is improved as we build our team,” he said. 
 
 The mistake came amid a rift between many of the EPA’s nonpolitical career employees and the political leaders appointed by Trump, including EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. 
 
 Some EPA employees have made their objections known, including through a campaign to lobby the Senate against Pruitt’s confirmation. 
 
 An EPA scientist explained his concerns in a letter to The New York Times published Wednesday. 
 
 “I am very saddened by what I see these days under an E.P.A. administrator whose role it is to dismantle the agency that he leads,” wrote Michael Kravitz, who works in Cincinnati. 

 President Trump signed an executive order on March 28, to obliterate former president Barack Obama's environmental record. The order will instruct federal regulators to rewrite Clean Power Plan rules that curb U.S. carbon emissions, as well as halt other environmental regulations. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) 
 
 The Environmental Protection Agency wanted to highlight some of the praise President Trump has received for his new executive order rolling back climate change regulations. 
 
 So on Thursday the EPA did what government agencies do whenever the president signs a new policy: sent out a news release loaded with glowing quotes from supporters. 
 
 Only one of the quotes — the first on the list, to be exact — wasn’t so glowing. 
 
 “With this Executive Order, President Trump has chosen to recklessly bury his head in the sand,” read a statement in the release attributed to Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). 
 
 “Today’s executive order calls into question America’s credibility and our commitment to tackling the greatest environmental challenge of our lifetime,” it read. “With the world watching, President Trump and Administrator Pruitt have chosen to shirk our responsibility, disregard clear science and undo the significant progress our country has made to ensure we leave a better, more sustainable planet for generations to come.” 
 
 Not exactly the glittering accolade the president might have expected from a coal country Republican. 
 
 Bloomberg BNA reporter Patrick Ambrosio was among the first to point out the obviously off-message excerpt: 
 
 This morning @EPA sent out a press release highlighting reaction to Trump's climate Executive Order…this first quote seems off message: pic.twitter.com/Na2EWCrBzj — Patrick Ambrosio (@Pat_Ambrosio) March 30, 2017 
 
 Indeed, the statement actually came not from Capito but from Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, who blasted Trump’s executive order on Tuesday. 
 
 An honest mistake, or a deliberate act of sabotage from a rogue operator in the EPA press office? 
 
 Unclear. But the mix-up did come at a time of unprecedented tension between Trump’s political appointees and the EPA’s rank and file, as The Washington Post has reported. Many career employees have expressed deep concerns about the new administrator, Scott Pruitt, who repeatedly challenged the agency’s legal authority to regulate certain pollutants during his terms as attorney general of Oklahoma. 
 
 Whatever the case, the EPA quickly issued a correction Thursday morning, saying an internal draft of the news release was accidentally sent out with Carper’s quote. 
 
 “We apologize for the error and are making sure that our process is improved as we build our team,” an EPA spokesman told Politico. 
 
 The EPA also included Capito’s actual statement, which lauded Trump’s climate moves. It read, in part: “President Trump kept his promise to roll back one of the most harmful acts of overreach by the Obama administration — the so-called Clean Power Plan. If fully implemented, the Clean Power Plan would have completely decimated West Virginia’s vital coal industry while having no meaningful climate impact.” 
 
 Trump thanked Capito by name when he signed his executive order at EPA headquarters on Tuesday. The order seeks to erase President Barack Obama’s climate legacy by paring back rules on carbon emissions, lifting a moratorium on federal coal leases and eliminating requirements that federal officials consider climate change impact when making regulatory decisions, as The Washington Post has reported. 
 
 Carper’s office told The Hill Thursday that the senator didn’t mind having his quote included in the EPA’s news release. 
 
 “Sen. Carper is happy to lend his words to a good cause,” his spokeswoman said. 
 
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 “President Trump has chosen to recklessly bury his head in the sand,” said the quote, which appeared at the top of the EPA press release’s litany of reactions to President Donald Trump’s climate order. | Getty EPA climate release tries to praise Trump but blasts him instead 
 
 An EPA effort to showcase praise for President Donald Trump’s climate moves went awry today — and instead accused Trump of choosing “to recklessly bury his head in the sand.” 
 
 The criticism came in a quote from Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, which EPA inaccurately attributed to Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a strong supporter of the coal industry and Trump’s order. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 “President Trump has chosen to recklessly bury his head in the sand,” said the quote, which appeared at the top of the EPA press release’s litany of reactions to Trump’s climate order. The quote added that the order "calls into question America’s credibility," and said the president and Administrator Scott Pruitt "have chosen to shirk our responsibility, disregard clear science and undo the significant progress our country has made.” 
 
 Carper is the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee. Capito’s actual statement, of course, praised Trump and the executive order, which instructed the agency to roll back a series of former President Barack Obama’s most important climate change initiatives. 
 
 “An internal draft was mistakenly sent with a quote that belonged to Senator Carper but was wrongly attributed to Senator Capito, whom we originally meant to quote,” an EPA spokesman said in an email. “We apologize for the error and are making sure that our process is improved as we build our team.” 
 
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 The agency swiftly issued a new version of the email, which also corrected the spelling of Capito's first name. 
 
 Trump specifically named Capito at the signing Tuesday at EPA headquarters in thanking various lawmakers, Cabinet members and industry leaders for their work. 
 
 “And Shelley, thank you very much also, I spotted you in the audience. Thank you,” Trump said. 
 
 EPA’s list also included praise from Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin and West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, as well as various industry groups, including the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and the American Petroleum Institute. 
 
 

 Capito Joins President Trump to Sign Measure Reversing Harmful Clean Power Plan 
 
 Senator Capito today joined President Trump for the Energy Independence Executive Order signing at the EPA 
 
 WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) today joined President Donald Trump at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, D.C. for the signing of the president’s Energy Independence Executive Order, which effectively kills President Obama’s harmful Clean Power Plan. Senator Capito issued the following statement applauding the Executive Order: 
 
 “Today, President Trump kept his promise to roll back one of the most harmful acts of overreach by the Obama administration – the so-called Clean Power Plan. If fully implemented, the Clean Power Plan would have completely decimated West Virginia’s vital coal industry while having no meaningful climate impact. Stopping this disastrous plan will preserve America’s coal industry, expand our manufacturing renaissance that is reliant upon affordable energy, and protect American families from unprecedented hikes in their electric bills. I was honored to join the president for the signing of this Executive Order, and I look forward to continuing working with the Trump administration to advance environmentally responsible policies that grow the economy – not kill jobs.” 
 
 In the 114th Congress, Senator Capito led the effort in the Senate to overturn Clean Power Plan regulations for existing power sources. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced a resolution that addressed regulations for new coal-fired power sources. Both measures passed the Senate and were vetoed by President Obama. 
 
 The Energy Independence Executive Order builds upon a growing list of actions by President Trump and congressional Republicans to block misguided pieces of President Obama’s regulatory agenda. 
 
 The United States Senate has passed 10 resolutions of disapproval this year overturning Obama-era rulemakings. Senator Capito was at the White House last month when the president signed into law a Congressional Review Act resolution that she helped introduce in the Senate, which overturned President Obama’s final anti-coal regulation known as the Stream Protection Rule. 
 
 President Trump also signed an executive order that began the process of reversing President Obama’s misguided waters of the United States rule. 
 
 ###
– It's a classic example of he said/she said, or maybe an instance of he said what she never said. The confusion comes courtesy of an EPA press release that was meant to quote a GOP senator who had glowing things to say about President Trump's recent climate-change rollbacks. And that senator, West Virginia's Shelley Moore Capito, was quoted in the release, but the words weren't hers, Politico reports. In the release, which the Washington Post notes was designed to include quotes from those who supported Trump's initiative, Capito chose to rip into Trump instead, noting he chose to "recklessly bury his head in the sand" and that his climate order put America's credibility on the line. He and EPA head Scott Pruitt, Capito went on, "have chosen to ... disregard clear science and undo the significant progress our country has made." Except Capito didn't make those remarks: Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, the Democratic lead on the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, did, and his words were mistakenly attributed to Capito in what an EPA spokesman tells Politico was "an internal draft [that] was mistakenly sent." "We apologize for the error," the spokesman notes, adding that they're working on their internal "process" to avoid such a mistake again. Carper didn't seem to mind his statements being appropriated, with his spokeswoman telling the Hill: "Sen. Carper is happy to lend his words to a good cause." Meanwhile, a press release out of Capito's office more accurately reflects her feelings on the matter: She stands by the president for his efforts to "preserve America's coal industry" and "expand our manufacturing renaissance."