month, an article in the huffington post used the 1966 smog to argue that china could follow the united states' model to regulate pollution. in pop culture external video "smog almost killed new york city, here's how" (march 24, 2017) — interview with photographer arthur tress and history of air pollution in the united states. video by seeker, via youtube. the smog event became a pop cultural referent in the 2010s. the smog figured into the plot of the 2012 mad men episode "dark shadows", set in new york city during the same thanksgiving weekend of 1966. a reviewer in the a.v. club interpreted the writers' use of the smog as a symbolic representation of the character betty, who spends the episode "longing to enter apartment and tear some shit up"—"hover" and "waiting to poison it from within". the new york city-based indie pop band vampire weekend used a photograph of the smog over the city skyline, taken by neal boenzi and originally published in the new york times, for the cover of their 2013 album modern vampires of the city. after the election of donald trump following the 2016 election of donald trump to the presidency, his administration's environmental policy—which included steep budget cuts to the epa and deregulation—prompted several reflections on the environmental condition of the united states prior to the creation of the epa. articles published by the new york times, vice media's tech-news site motherboard, public radio station wnyc, real-estate news site 6sqft, and the natural resources defense council (nrdc) environmental advocacy group connected trump's declared policy agenda to a risk of returning to a more polluted environment, with each publication evoking the 1966 smog as an example of the potential dangers of defunding and deregulation. david hawkins, an attorney for nrdc, recalled: i was a student at columbia law school during the 1966 episode. it was frightening, but while that is the best-known event, heavy pollution was an everyday fact of life those days.