Liberal journalists routinely describe Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler as a “former coal lobbyist” and “climate change denier,” suggesting that he is destroying the EPA from within and in cahoots with big business. But this narrative is essentially wrong and misleading on all counts.

I interviewed Wheeler recently to discuss how his agency was marking the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and his tenure more broadly. I encountered a very different man than the one you’d read about in the New York Times.