“Intense Culture of Fear”: Behind the Scenes as Trump Destroys the EPA From Within

In a statement last month on its first 100 days under President Donald Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency celebrated 100 achievements.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency had taken “significant actions” to protect public health and the environment while working “to Power the Great American Comeback.” The agency said it was also working to fulfill Trump’s promises to revitalize the auto industry, “restore the rule of law,” and give decision-making power back to the states.

The EPA, the bosses were claiming, was succeeding in its mission of protecting human health and the environment.

In practice, the agency has done the opposite, several EPA staffers told The Intercept.

Environmental advocates and experts have criticized the administration for an “all-out assault” on the environment. Now, EPA staffers are speaking out in the wake of staff cuts and the gutting of a spate of programs to remove lead from drinking water, support rural wastewater treatment, and address racial disparities in environmental pollution.

“The mission of the EPA has been shifted,” said Amelia Hertzberg, an environmental protection specialist at the EPA.

“Americans are going to be less healthy. And frankly the EPA is going to be less efficient,” Hertzberg said. “If you’re less efficient, you’re wasting money. It’s working at cross-purposes with their stated goals.”

An EPA spokesperson disputed staffers’ characterization of its efforts to cut staff and weaken programs.

“At EPA, we are doing our part to Power the Great American Comeback, and we are proud of our work to advance the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment every day since January 20,” EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou said in a statement to The Intercept.

“Not Our Mission”

Under Zeldin’s leadership, the EPA announced a set of new core priorities that includes making the U.S. the artificial intelligence capital of the world and revitalizing the auto industry.

Staffers are concerned that instead of making communities healthier, under Trump the agency is now focused on serving industry, said Ellie Hagen, an environmental scientist at the EPA’s Environmental Justice, Community Health, and Environmental Review division.

It’s not clear how the EPA is supposed to serve those goals, said Hagen said, whose job is being terminated in July and was speaking on behalf of her local union, American Federation of Government Employees Local 704.

“A lot of us are really confused about what our new mission is, when they’re coming out with these pillars of serving the auto industry and bringing back auto industry jobs,” Hagen said. “I don’t know how we fit into that.”

The EPA’s role is not to create jobs; it’s to regulate and protect people from pollution, she said.

“Our mission is not to promote AI or energy dominance,” she said. “That’s not our mission.”

Deep Cuts

The EPA has said it is aiming to cut the agency’s budget by 65 percent and bring staffing levels to Reagan-era levels. As part of Trump’s efforts to gut the federal workforce under the auspices of government efficiency, the Office of Personnel Management sent the first round of deferred resignation offers to federal employees in January. More than 540 EPA staffers took those deferred resignations, which were open until early February.

Nine more employees were subject to a reduction in force as of May 7, according to a statement to The Intercept from the EPA press office; 280 employees in diversity, equity, and inclusion and environmental justice programs were notified last month that they were part of staffing cuts.

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As of last week, more than 1,500 staffers applied for deferred resignation and a “voluntary early retirement” program.

The day the resignation offers were sent out, EPA staff also received notice of agency reforms including return to office and “enhanced standards of conduct,” including “loyalty.” The EPA reopened its deferred resignation program last month.

Last week, the agency said it is planning to dissolve the Office of Research and Development, which does life-saving research on toxicity and developing sampling protocols, and helped in emergencies after the East Palestine train derailment in Ohio and the Covid-19 pandemic.

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As a result, more than 1,500 scientists will have to compete for 300 jobs, Hagen said.

“It’s essentially like lobotomizing our agency. If we don’t have the brain — the research behind protecting the environment — we can’t do that effectively, and I think that’s exactly what they want,” she said. “They’re doing all this under the guise of efficiency, but what they really are doing is dismantling this agency from doing its job.”

The EPA announced in March that it was ending its Environmental Justice Program and the agency’s “DEI Arms.” A few weeks later, the day before Earth Day, Hagen received notice that her tenured position was being terminated and that she would be removed no later than July 31.

“They did it on the eve of Earth Day to send a message,” she said. “They’re showing that they don’t feel the environmental justice program staff are loyal to this administration. They think what we stand for is different than what this administration stands for. So they’re making an example out of us.”

The agency said the term “environmental justice” had been used to advance left-wing politics.

“As Administrator Zeldin has repeatedly stressed, ‘environmental justice’ has been used primarily as an excuse to fund left-wing activist groups instead of actually spending those dollars on directly remediating the specific environmental issues that need to be addressed,” the EPA press office said.

The staffing cuts and resignation offers have had their intended effect, Hagen said: to scare career federal employees and push them out of the agency.

“They’re creating such an intense culture of fear that I think they’re pushing a lot of people in that direction,” she said.

Fewer people took deferred resignations in the first round because there was confusion around what direction the EPA was headed in. But Hagen expects many more to take the next round after leaders made clear they were completely shifting the agency’s agenda.

“Based on the mood in the office and hearing from my colleagues, I never thought would leave the EPA,” she said, “I think a lot of people are going to take it just because of how scared and traumatized we all have been over the past 100 days.”

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Another EPA staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their livelihood said they feared for their future after being placed on administrative leave in February for their work in the Environmental Justice Program.

“I’m a military spouse who worked to better protect all including those most vulnerable and least protected from harmful exposures to chemicals and pollution,” they said.

“Our family is having to relocate from our home and community we love. We’ve both served our country and now are afraid for both our livelihoods,” they said. “This is our story and what we’ve been living through. So many of our friends are in similar situations here and across the country.”

“Non-Political”?

Much of the administration’s attack on the EPA is tied up in the politicization of principles that historically had bipartisan support — like environmental justice, which staffers pointed out was until recently not viewed as a political project.

“Environmental justice is supposed to be non-political,” Hertzberg said. “It’s just about identifying the people most in danger of pollution so you can help them first.”

President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, first created the Environmental Justice Program in 1992.

“This is a program that has been standing for decades, has done life-saving work across both sides of the aisle, efficiently and effectively,” Hagen said.

The agency is now cutting other programs that have bipartisan support, she added.

“How can you say this program has bipartisan support or support from the administration when you’re intimidating people into taking this buyout?” she said. “I think a lot of EPA staff will be taking the second round of buyouts, and we have no idea how that’s going to gut these statutory — what they say is bipartisan — support programs.”

In their attacks on “DEI” and “wokeness” — for example, efforts to ensure civil liberties and equal protection under the law for communities that have historically faced institutional discrimination — Trump and his allies have distorted the concept of environmental justice into a political weapon, Hertzberg said.

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“Environmental justice communities are young children. They’re pregnant women, the elderly, those with medical conditions, those without access to proper services, which is often rural communities and those living closer to polluters,” Hertzberg said. “This is really supposed to be a non-political part of the EPA, and it’s castigated as though we all have this axe to grind and are suspect in some way.”

Staffers said the government is now leaving communities they’ve built relationships with over the years vulnerable to life-threatening pollution and health hazards.

“The people who are still in the office are feeling worried about their jobs and feeling frustrated and heartbroken about the communities that we’ve served who are not being served anymore,” Hertzberg said.

EPA staff are now put in the position of betraying communities they’ve tried to build trust in, she said.

“Now you just have to let them down,” she said. “It’s the heartbreak of watching these people who you promised you were going to help be let down again, to have your hands tied behind your back, and at the same time being accused of being poor stewards of taxpayer funds.”