It’s a confusing time to work for the EPA.
In February 2025, the EPA announced it placed 171 employees in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and accessibility and environmental justice on administrative leave.
“Under President [Donald] Trump, the EPA will be focused on our core mission to protect human health and the environment, while Powering the Great American Comeback. The previous Administration used DEI and Environmental Justice to advance ideological priorities, distributing billions of dollars to organizations in the name of climate equity. This ends now. We will be good stewards of tax dollars and do everything in our power to deliver clean air, land, and water to every American, regardless of race, religion, background, and creed,” said Administrator Lee Zeldin in an Agency press release.
Since then, the EPA has also “recalled dozens of environmental justice staffers who were previously placed on administrative leave pending possible termination,” says climate news site Protect Earth Newsmagazine.
Other sources, such as Minneapolis, Minnesota, TV news station KARE11, report that EPA probationary employees received an e-mail terminating their employment only to receive another e-mail the next business day stating they had been rehired.
Additionally, other federal employees who accepted the buyout offer ended up being fired.
“President Donald Trump’s administration acknowledged … that some federal government employees who took the ‘Fork in the Road’ buyout offer were also, subsequently, fired or let go—and that this was an error,” reports ABC News.
On February 26, 2025, in his first cabinet meeting, Trump took EPA employees by surprise when he said Zeldin planned to cut EPA staffing by 65%, Reuters notes.
The next day, the “White House … walked back [Trump’s] claim the day before that the [EPA] plans to cut 65% of its workforce, saying the environmental regulator plans to cut its spending by 65%,” the Reuters article says.
“Efforts by Zeldin and the White House to clarify that Trump was referring to budget cuts—rather than staffing cuts—offer little comfort,” said Marie Owens Powell, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, according to AP News. “Such a large spending cut would require major staffing reductions for jobs such as monitoring air and water quality, responding to natural disasters and lead abatement, among many other agency functions, she said.”
Federal employees are in a tailspin.
“I frankly find it pretty insulting and chaotic and disorganized,” said Nick Detter, a former U.S. Department of Agriculture natural resource specialist, according to ABC News. “I would never say that there’s no room for improvement efficiency in the federal government. … But in my experience over the last month with this whole thing, that’s not what this has been. This has just been slash and burn.”
On Monday, March 10, 2025, hundreds protested in San Diego, demanding that the EPA rehire terminated employees.
“We’re just fed up with what the Trump administration has been doing, attacking our communities, their climate,” said Shayne Petkiewicz, who volunteers with the climate action group San Diego 350, which organized the protest and march, according to San Diego TV station KPBS. “We’re here to support one, the EPA workers that have been fired. We’re here to protest against the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine climate action.”
Critics believe the Trump administration’s goal is to permanently disable the EPA.
“Gutting the agency by 65% will leave polluters unchecked, contaminating clean air, water and public health, and all but guaranteeing greater risk for vulnerable populations like children and the elderly,” said Lauren Pagel, policy director of the environmental group Earthworks, according to AP News.