Last Monday, the Trump administration decided to cut federal jobs at two key environmental protection agencies, targeting employees who work on scientific research and enforcing anti-pollution laws.
Environmental Protection Agency employees have received new layoff notices as funding dwindles due to the government shutdown. The Home Office has announced plans to permanently cut more than 2,000 positions, according to filing a lawsuit his head of HR.
Layoffs at the Home Office, also known as 'downsizing', are in the spotlight ongoing litigation over President Donald Trump and his administration's efforts to further gut the federal workforce.
Monday's filing was in response to a judge's order requiring the Interior Ministry to disclose plans to lay off unionized employees. The administration said it intends to cut 2,050 positions at the Interior Department. This decision was made before the government shutdown began.
The timing contradicts Trump's recent claim that government layoffs were caused by the shutdown.
According to the documents, most of the planned cuts will affect the US Geological Survey (USGS), the Bureau of Land Management, regional offices of the National Park Service and the headquarters of the Department of the Interior.
The Department of the Interior administers national parks, wildlife refuges, and other public lands. It oversees environmental and wildlife conservation, fulfills trust obligations to Alaska Natives and Indian tribes, and conducts scientific research on endangered species, water resources and natural disasters such as floods and wildfires so officials can better respond to them.
These research positions will be particularly hard hit by planned layoffs, including projects focused on Great Lakes ecosystems and the USGS Columbia Environmental Research Center in Missouri, where scientists study toxic pollutants such as PFASclass of chemicals. Trump Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised contact.
When asked for comment, the White House referred questions to the Interior Department, which did not respond.
Environmental groups described the move as part of a broader campaign by Trump and his administration to halt research and data collection on environmental pollution, following what Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin called the largest rollback of the policy. environmental protection in US history.
“This plan will hollow out the essential science on which every American depends,” Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the environmental group Center for Western Priorities, said in a statement announcing the new Interior Department cuts released last week.
Rokala said the planned cuts “will devastate scientific research in the Rocky Mountains, Great Plains and Great Lakes” and harm the workers who “make our parks and public lands the envy of the world.”
Rokala also said Monday's reports only revealed planned layoffs of unionized employees: “We don't know how many non-union offices and positions are also on the chopping block.”
The EPA received a new furlough notice as the agency's funding dried up. Earlier this month, Trump said the shutdown was an opportunity to dismantle “Democratic programs that we want to kill or that we never wanted to do.” He has repeatedly referred to environmentalism, conservation, and related public health issues as “woke” and left-wing.
Some of the country's key events environmental protectionand indeed The EPA itselfdate back to the Republican Nixon administration.
“Only Trump's EPA could fire the people who protect our children from breathing polluted air and drinking polluted water, but keep the pesticide office open to greenlight more poisons,” said J.W. Glass, an EPA policy specialist at the environmental organization Center for Biological Diversity.
Glass, in a written statement, accused the administration of using the shutdown to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency, leaving “our communities to pay for it.”
EPA spokeswoman Carolyn Holran said in a written statement that the suggestion that the layoffs are part of a deliberate campaign to dismantle the EPA “is both inaccurate and unfair to the dedicated EPA employees who continue to work to protect human health and the environment.”
Holran blamed Democrats for the government shutdown and said the Environmental Protection Agency is taking a “calculated approach” to ensure “we can continue to deliver on the President's priorities and avoid actions that directly impact or harm the American people.”
When asked about the number of layoff notices sent and which offices they affect, Holran called it a “ridiculous question.”
In a written statement, Peter Murchie, senior director of the nonprofit Environmental Defense Network and a former Environmental Protection Agency official, called on Congress to intervene to stop the “systematic dismantling.”
“The health toll American families face—cancer, childhood asthma, infertility, organ failure—does not stop with politics,” Murchie said. “When EPA experts go home, much of the agency's work simply stops.”
