President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency announced this week that it would either fire or reassign 455 employees in an effort to eliminate the Biden administration’s woke programs.
The EPA notified 280 employees that they would be terminated in a “reduction in force,” Axios reported. Another 175 staffers responsible for “statutory functions” will be reassigned.
‘Getting people back in the office is a priority now.’
Those impacted held “environmental justice” and diversity, equity, and inclusion roles in the agency’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, Office of Inclusive Excellence, and its regional offices.
An EPA spokesperson told Axios, “EPA is taking the next step to terminate the Biden-Harris Administration’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Environmental Justice arms of the agency.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has accused the former administration of throwing away $20 billion in taxpayer funds on environmental justice initiatives.
“No matter how hard some try to circle the wagons to defend lighting billions of YOUR tax dollars on fire to be misspent in a $20 BILLION Green Slush Fund, I will not compromise on my ZERO tolerance policy against ANY waste and abuse!” he wrote in a Monday post on social media.
During a Monday press conference, Zeldin addressed efforts to streamline the agency and save taxpayer funds.
“When we came in, we inherited an operation that, for the most part, people weren’t even here in the office. COVID-era remote work is over,” he stated. “When I came in, I had asked the team, ‘How much have employees been coming in since January of 2024?’ And the answer is that on Mondays and Fridays, it averaged five to eight percent. The record high attendance was 37%.”
“Getting people back in the office is a priority now,” Zeldin declared, adding that returning workers to the office would allow the agency to make informed decisions about its real estate footprint.
Zeldin’s EPA has already saved American taxpayers roughly $18 million by removing employees from the Ronald Reagan Building and consolidating its office space in Washington, D.C.
The EPA administrator has focused much of his attention this week on addressing the sewage flowing over the border from Mexico into California.
On Tuesday, Zeldin toured a San Diego County plant that treats the sewage from the polluted Tijuana River. He stated that the EPA plans to present Mexico with a list of actions to resolve the issue.
“This is not a U.S.-side answer. I wish that we could resolve this all on our own,” Zeldin told KXTV. “There’s a lot of needs on the Mexican side.”
He said that he spoke with Mexican officials about “chemical treatment” and “diverting 10 million gallons per day from the Tijuana River to the dam.”
“We want both sides to sit down and go project by project to talk about the timeline of everything and make sure that every single project is operating on the tightest timeline possible,” he added.
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