Almost 300 EPA employees face the threat of layoffs as the Trump administration intensifies its campaign to eradicate programs tagged with a connection to diversity, equity and inclusion.
“This action is necessary to align our workforce with the Agency’s current and future needs and to ensure the efficient and effective operation of our programs,” Travis Voyles, the agency’s assistant deputy administrator, wrote in a Monday notice warning workers around the country that they are subject to a “reduction in force,” or RIF, that will take effect July 31.
The notices were sent to about 280 employees engaged in DEI or environmental justice activities, according to an EPA spokesperson who was granted anonymity to speak. Under the complex procedures governing a federal reduction in force, the affected workers won’t all necessarily lose their jobs but could have to take another position to stay with the agency.
The planned cuts appear to be the largest for EPA since the Reagan administration, with even steeper reductions on the horizon as President Donald Trump seeks to slash the size of the federal government.
The cuts were expected. Last month, the administration announced the elimination of the agency’s environmental justice and DEI arms after previously putting 168 employees on administrative leave.
Once the reduction in force takes effect at the end of July, the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, created in its current form under President Joe Biden, will be scrapped, the spokesperson confirmed.
Even so, the notices, which arrived on the eve of Earth Day, carried pain on several levels.
“I think it’s really insulting to target employees that have tried to do nothing but provide services to the most vulnerable,” Ellie Hagen, a scientist who works in the Chicago-area regional office of EPA’s environmental justice, community health and environmental review division, said in an interview.
Hagen, who has been with EPA for about five years, stressed that she was speaking in her capacity as a legislative and political coordinator for the American Federation of Government Employees local that represents EPA workers in the region.
She was not optimistic about her options for remaining at the agency but noted that both Republican and Democratic presidents have backed efforts to reduce pollution’s well-documented burden on people of color and low-income communities.
“This is not work that is new or partisan even though that’s how it’s being framed by this administration,” she said. “If we’re not doing it, who will?”
As grounds for the planned cuts, Voyles pointed to two Trump executive orders that respectively call for an end to “radical and wasteful government DEI programs” and the elimination of government bloat.
“With this action, EPA is delivering organizational improvements to the personnel structure that will directly benefit the American people and better advance the Agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment,” Voyles wrote.
Besides targeting 280 employees for the reduction in force, EPA is transferring about 175 others involved in children’s health, implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act and other statutorily required functions to other offices.
Reaction
Assailing the looming cutback were both environmental groups and the American Federation of Government Employees, which is EPA’s largest employee union.
“Many Americans who are impacted most by environmental dangers live in lower-income areas, where they face higher exposure to air pollution and environmental contaminants,” Joyce Howell, executive vice president of the AFGE council that represents more than 8,400 EPA workers, said in a statement.
“Eliminating jobs that ensure these communities get the same access to clean air and clean drinking water afforded to others goes to show this administration has no interest in protecting the American people,” she added.
“The people that Donald Trump is putting out of work are hardworking, dedicated civil servants who have devoted their careers to protecting our clean air and water and securing a livable future for us all,” Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a separate statement. “The only people who will benefit from their firings are corporate polluters.”
As of the first quarter of fiscal 2025, which ended in December, EPA’s core workforce totaled about 14,700 full-time equivalents, according to a report to Congress obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News through the Freedom of Information Act.
In a Monday news conference held only hours before Voyles’ notice landed in employees’ inboxes, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin offered no heads-up that it was coming.
Like other federal agencies, EPA recently had to submit a second round of downsizing plans to the White House Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management that are supposed to outline “competitive areas for subsequent large-scale RIFs.”
Zeldin declined to say Monday when a decision might come. “We’re just trying to get it right,” he said.
Sean Reilly can be reached on Signal at SeanReilly.70.
Reporter Kevin Bogardus contributed.
