New: 1,000s Of Positions Eliminated/ Furloughed, Mostly @ EPA & Interior; Science, EE, Pollution/Toxics Law Enforcement
The Trump administration moved Monday to slash federal jobs across two key environmental and conservation agencies, targeting employees who work on scientific research and the enforcement of anti-pollution laws. At the Environmental Protection Agency, staff received a new round of furlough notices as funding dwindles amid the government shutdown. The Department of the Interior disclosed plans to permanently cut more than 2,000 positions, according to a court filing by its chief personnel officer.
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Those research positions would be especially hard hit by the planned layoffs, including projects focused on the Great Lakes ecosystems and the USGS Columbia Environmental Research Center in Missouri, where scientists study toxic contaminants such as PFAS, a class of chemicals Trump’s health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has pledged to address. Asked for comment, the White House referred questions to the Interior Department, which did not respond.
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At the EPA, the new furlough notices arrived as the agency’s funding dries up. Last week, Trump said the shutdown was an opportunity to dismantle “Democrat programs that we want to close up or we never wanted to happen.” He has repeatedly cast environmental protection, conservation and related public health issues as “woke” and left-wing. Some of the country’s key environmental protections, and in fact the EPA itself, date back to the Republican Nixon administration.
“Only Trump’s EPA would lay off the people who protect our kids from breathing polluted air and drinking contaminated water but keep the pesticide office open to greenlight more poisons,” said J.W. Glass, EPA policy specialist at the conservation organization Center for Biological Diversity. Glass, in a written statement, accused the administration of using the shutdown to dismantle the EPA, leaving “our communities paying the price.”
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21102025/trump-targets-federal-employees-working-on-conservation-and-environmental-protection/