Underground Dispatch: The Washington Post's PFAS Spin, Meta's AI Perverts, and Media's Favorite Cover-ups

A water safety rollback spun as protection, a trafficking hotline failing victims, and $3.5 billion in California healthcare cuts—why won't the media give you the whole story?

May 16, 2025

Welcome to this week's Underground Dispatch, where I wade through the media swamp so you don't have to ruin your good shoes. Trust me, it's getting muckier by the week out here.

What's on the menu today? A masterclass in headline manipulation from The Washington Post, a taxpayer-funded trafficking hotline that apparently forgot its one job, California's $3.5 billion healthcare reality check, and Meta's AI chatbots that really need to be grounded from the internet. Plus, a California social media law you probably haven't heard about because... well, CNN is busy covering for Tapper.

If you're new here, welcome! I'm also on Instagram for breaking news and co-host the

Rivera and Reeves

podcast, where we dissect media narratives twice weekly. Our monthly UNFiltered episodes for paid supporters go places that would make a corporate news editor break out in hives.

Let's dive into this week's media circus, shall we?

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→ The EPA's "Forever Chemicals" Story: How Legacy Media Spins Protection as "Weakening"

Okay, so earlier this week the EPA announced they're keeping the strict limits on the worst forever chemicals while giving small towns extra time to comply. Reasonable, right?

Not if you're The Washington Post! Their very unbiased headline read "EPA will weaken rule curbing forever chemicals in drinking water," like Trump personally ordered arsenic added to the rural water supply. I pulled a muscle from the induced eyeroll.

Let's get real about what's actually happening here:

The Real Breakdown:

• The EPA is keeping the Biden-era limits on PFOA and PFOS (the nasty ones we're actually sure about)

• Rural communities get until 2031 instead of 2029 to comply because, shocker, small towns don't have infinite money and need time

• They're reconsidering rules on four less-studied chemicals (the ones we're still gathering data on)

• They're creating a new program called "PFAS OUT" to help utilities meet standards (cute acronym, EPA)

But The Washington Post couldn't help itself. It's like they have a dartboard of negative words to use whenever Trump's EPA does... literally anything.

The Post's Coverage (AKA Creative Fiction):

• "Weakening" is their go-to framing, despite maintained core protections

• Environmental activists get center stage while rural communities struggling to pay for compliance are background extras

• Trump's previous PFAS work, including his 2018 PFAS summit and 2019 action plan? Never happened, apparently

• EPA Administrator Zeldin's history of fighting for PFAS regulations? Not relevant to their story!

Meanwhile, The Daily Caller published what appears to be a completely different story about the same announcement, emphasizing maintained protections and practical implementation.

The MAHA Blindspot

Here's what's extra rich about this whole charade: Trump's "Make America Healthy Again" initiative was a big reason he won in 2024. Clean water was a central promise. And now his EPA is... wait for it... protecting clean water while being realistic about implementation.

But admitting that Trump is delivering on MAHA would cause cognitive dissonance so severe it might short-circuit The Post's editorial board. They spent months mocking MAHA as insincere, so now they're stuck pretending that maintaining protections is somehow "weakening" them.

The Association of State Drinking Water Administrators supports the extension, by the way. But including that would ruin the Post's preferred narrative that this is just environmental sabotage.

Look, I get it. Trump's not their guy. But at some point, doesn't basic journalistic integrity require acknowledging when an administration keeps a campaign promise? Or are we so deep in the partisan swamp that we can't even agree on what words mean anymore?

The next time someone tells you media bias isn't real, just show them these headlines. It's not subtle anymore—it's performance art.

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