The Summary
- In the last two weeks, EPA staffers have had to contend with dramatic shake-ups at the agency.
- About 1,100 “probationary” employees were told they could be terminated, and 168 staffers working on environmental justice issues were put on leave.
- Lee Zeldin, the EPA’s new administrator, said his priorities for the agency include boosting AI and automotive jobs.
In the brief week and a half Lee Zeldin has helmed the Environmental Protection Agency, a flurry of personnel moves have dramatically shaken up the agency — like many others — and rattled some staff members.
On the day of Zeldin’s confirmation last week, the EPA notified about 1,100 “probationary” employees who had been at the agency for less than a year that they could be terminated at any time.
Then on Thursday, the agency put 168 staffers on administrative leave; those affected worked on environmental justice issues across the EPA’s 10 regional offices and at its headquarters.
The agency this week also took down an online mapping tool called EJScreen, which had been used by federal, state and local governments to help policymakers make decisions in support of environmental justice. The term refers to the idea that people should have equitable access to clean and healthy environments and that some underserved communities have historically faced disproportionate environmental harms. A state highway agency, for example, could use EJScreen to review demographic information as it planned a roadway construction project.
Zeldin assumed his post a day after federal workers received “Fork in the Road” emails offering them buyouts to resign. Their deadline to accept the offer was Thursday night, but a federal judge put initiative on hold that day, following a legal challenge from labor unions. The program is blocked until at least Monday.
In an address to staffers viewed by more than 10,000 of them on Tuesday, Zeldin said he had a mandate to streamline the EPA and reduce waste within it.
“We have a charge from Congress to be as efficient as we possibly can with the tax dollars that are sent to us,” Zeldin said, adding that Americans were feeling “a lot of economic pain.”
His initial actions, and the shock they have given staffers, suggest that Zeldin and the Trump administration are wasting no time in dramatically remaking the EPA and redefining its purpose, abandoning an approach in which environmental harms are seen through a lens of race or socioeconomic disadvantage.
Molly Vaseliou, an Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson, said the EPA is focused on complying with President Donald Trump’s executive orders, including the order titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs.”
“The EPA is diligently implementing President Trump’s executive orders as well as subsequent associated implementation memos. President Trump was elected with a mandate from the American people to do just this,” Vaseliou said.
Several EPA staffers said a sense of fear and foreboding has quickly pervaded the agency.
“The past two weeks have been pretty horrendous,” said Marie Owens Powell, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, a union that represents about 8,500 EPA staffers. “Every day, it’s been something. It has been exhausting.”
Powell, who has worked as a storage tank inspector at the EPA, added that there had been other recent surprises, like when staffers’ preferred pronouns were removed from their email signatures without notice.
Another EPA worker, who asked that their name not be published out of fear of retribution, described the feeling as being “in limbo” or “purgatory.”
“We’re afraid to do work that could be viewed as being out of compliance with executive orders or at all in opposition to Trump’s agenda. We want to speak up and push back, but the fear in that is palpable,” the staffer said. “We are all just waiting to see who is next.”
Vaseliou said Zeldin spent his first weeks meeting career EPA staff and visiting several disaster sites, including East Palestine, Ohio, where a train carrying chemicals derailed in February 2023 and released toxic smoke. He also went to Los Angeles, where wildfires that broke out last month torched thousands of homes, and to western North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene killed dozens.
In a news release on Tuesday, Zeldin laid out five priorities for the EPA under his leadership, including efforts to “pursue energy independence,” develop “the cleanest energy on the planet” and ensure clean air and water. Some parts of his agenda, however, diverge from the EPA’s core mission — at least as it has operated under past administrations. Those include advancing artificial intelligence, reforming permitting and bringing back automotive jobs.
Jeremy Symons, senior adviser at the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former EPA staffers, said he was concerned about the direction the agency may head, based on Zeldin’s statements.
“It’s hard to see yourself in that agenda if you’re worried about toxic pollution in your community,” said Symons, who worked at the EPA from 1994 to 2001. “It’s an alarming retreat from EPA’s mission of protecting public health and the environment, in service of a political agenda.”
Democrats in Congress appear to be gearing up for fights over the EPA’s future. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., attempted to enter the agency headquarters on Thursday, asking for a meeting with representatives of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, who he said he believed were working at the agency.
“We just went in and asked for a meeting with the DOGE representatives, and we were denied and we were turned away,” Markey said at a news conference outside the building, where he railed against the new administration.
Vaseliou said Markey had not taken the proper steps needed to enter the headquarters and described the event as a “publicity stunt.”
A spokeswoman for Markey said Thursday that the senator had not received confirmation about whether DOGE representatives were at the EPA. However, the name of a worker whom NBC News has identified as a member of DOGE, Cole Killian, was listed in the EPA’s directory, according to multiple sources.
An email to Killian’s EPA email requesting an interview was not immediately returned. Vaseliou did not answer questions about Killian or whether he was connected to DOGE.
When asked about Markey’s concerns on Thursday, Harrison Fields, a White House deputy press secretary, said Democrats were “gaslighting” about DOGE’s mission.
“Slashing waste, fraud, and abuse, and becoming better stewards of the American taxpayer’s hard-earned dollars might be a crime to Democrats, but it’s not a crime in a court of law,” Fields said.
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