The EPA could be the next target of the Trump Administration’s mass layoffs, although it’s unclear how deep the cuts might go.
As reported by The New York Times, President Trump said during a Wednesday cabinet meeting that Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, planned to fire 65% of EPA employees, which agency officials later admitted would prevent the agency from functioning. It’s in keeping with the arbitrary slashing of federal employment and spending undertaken by Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
According to the NY Times, Trump said Zeldin “thinks he’s going to be cutting 65 or so percent of the people from environmental. And we’re going to speed up that process, too, at the same time.”
President Donald Trump (Photo courtesy Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)
Within minutes, EPA managers said they received a White House memo telling them to prepare for mass layoffs. Trump’s 65% figure was soon contradicted by an EPA official, who told reporters that the President has been referring to overall agency budget cuts, not a 65% reduction in personnel.
The EPA had 15,123 full-time employees at the end of December, according to the latest federal budget. A 65% staff cut would mean more than 10,000 jobs lost, which would hobble the agency’s ability to perform not only regulatory functions but its environmental-hazard response, according to Mary Owens Powell, president of the American Federation of Government Employees.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Cybercab event (screenshot) – Oct. 2024
“It means 65% less people available to respond to natural disasters, which are happening more frequently, not less. It would mean 65% less people to respond to hazardous cleanups, to do air monitoring and lead abatement,” Powell told the Times, adding that the administration had not informed the union of staffing cuts.
Such cuts would be in line with the Trump Administration’s agenda of attacking federal bureaucracy generally, and anything related to climate-change policy in particular.
The administration has moved to freeze funding for a national EV charging network—much to the chagrin of automakers. California is pushing ahead with its own charger buildout despite that, and it may be a tactic other states will need to adopt to continue progress.
