Patty Murray walked into a Senate EPA hearing Wednesday convinced she was about to go viral with a gotcha moment for Lee Zeldin.

She had a question ready that she thought would trip him up.

It did not go the way she planned.

Patty Murray Asked Lee Zeldin About Abortions in the Water That Left Him Completely Speechless

Lee Zeldin sat before the Senate Wednesday with a binder on the table in front of him labeled HOT TOPICS.

Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) had a question for him that had nothing to do with any of them.

What she asked him next left the EPA Administrator completely unable to respond.

Murray came armed with a New York Times article, asking Zeldin: "Do you seriously believe there's abortion in the water, like some of the far-right activists are suggesting?"

After confirming he'd "not had a conversation with anyone at the agency as far as abortions in water," he delivered the only honest answer available: "I don't even know what you're talking about."

That was it. That was the gotcha. A United States senator, using her time at a hearing convened to discuss a proposal to cut the EPA's budget by more than half, asked a Cabinet official whether he believed water could perform abortions.

She walked away with nothing.

https://x.com/epaleezeldin/status/2054640095949361207“>https://x.com/epaleezeldin/status/2054640095949361207

The Truth About Mifepristone and Drinking Water

Here's what Murray twisted: nobody claimed water causes abortions.

What conservatives asked – in a letter signed by 25 members of Congress – was whether mifepristone, the abortion pill used in more than two-thirds of all U.S. abortions, belongs on the EPA's list of tracked drinking water contaminants.

Nearly 650,000 medication abortions happened in 2023 alone, most of them at home, with the unborn children tragically flushed directly into the waste water system – along with the chemicals that killed them.

The FDA's own environmental assessment acknowledging that mifepristone enters the environment through patient excretions is three decades old.

Asking whether a potent progesterone-blocking drug gets flushed down hundreds of thousands of toilets every year is not the same as claiming your tap water kills babies.

Murray thought she would trap Zeldin with a Democrat talking point designed to obscure the truth about killing babies.

He didn’t fall for it.

Patty Murray Has Made a Habit of Wasting Senate Hearings on Stunts

This wasn't a stumble. This is who she is now.

She showed up to a hearing on a proposal to cut the EPA's budget by more than half and burned her questioning time on abortion water theater instead of the funding cuts she claims to care about.

She demanded that RFK Jr. answer for "presiding over the destruction" of American health at a hearing last year. He told her she had presided over that destruction herself across 30 years in the Senate.

Meanwhile, Zeldin spent the week at multiple hearings responding to Democrats with his own questions, calling out lawmakers for being unprepared, and defending the administration's record.

When one Democrat cited numbers Zeldin disputed, he told him to "have your dog pee on" the data.

He wasn't rattled by Patty Murray.

She chose the stunt. She got nothing.

Sources:

• Patty Murray, "Senator Murray Presses EPA Administrator on Agency Siding with Mega Polluters," Senator Patty Murray Official Website, May 13, 2026.
• James Lankford, "Lankford Urges EPA to Investigate Environmental Risks of Abortion Drug Mifepristone," Senator James Lankford Official Website, June 18, 2025.
• Tom Loosemore, "Republicans Ask for EPA Probe into Impact of Abortion Pills on Water Supply, Infertility," Washington Times, July 1, 2025.
• Students for Life of America, "Students for Life Calls on the EPA to Add Forever Chemicals in Mifepristone to Contaminants List," Students for Life of America Official Website, April 2, 2026.
• "Zeldin Clashes with Senators on EPA's Budget Plan," E&E News by POLITICO, May 13, 2026.
• Seattle Red, "Murray, EPA, Zeldin, Abortion Water Hearing," Seattle Red, May 14, 2026.