Eric Lipton

The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in “covert propaganda” when it blitzed social media to urge the public to support a controversial rule intended to better protect streams and surface waters, congressional auditors concluded.

Republican attorneys general have formed alliances with some of the nation’s top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

If the oil and gas industry wants to prevent its opponents from slowing its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, a veteran Washington political consultant told a room full of industry executives in a speech that was secretly recorded.

As the government shutdown grinds toward a potential debt default, some of the country's most influential business executives have come to a conclusion all but unthinkable a few years ago: Their voices are carrying little weight with the House majority that their millions of dollars in campaign contributions helped build and sustain.