Two left-leaning government watchdog groups on Thursday called upon the EPA to launch an internal investigation into whether the agency broke federal laws in its friendly coordination with Fox News. Last month, The Daily Beast reported that before an interview with former EPA Chief Scott Pruitt last year, a Fox & Friends producer sent a script to be approved by the EPA’s communications team. In a letter to the EPA’s office of inspector general on Thursday, Democracy Forward and Restore Public Trust said the EPA may have “violated federal laws that prohibit government funds from being expended to engage in covert propaganda” by approving the script without disclosing it had been government approved. “The Trump administration has a history of deceiving the public, and this is just another glaring example,” said Caroline Ciccone, Restore Public Trust’s executive director. “The American people expect that government officials honor long-established boundaries between the government and the press - and shouldn’t be using the media as its own publicist.”

—Maxwell Tani