Employees in EPA’s science office were summoned to an ad hoc town hall Tuesday in the wake of news reports that the Trump administration plans to terminate most of that office’s staff.
But staffers hoping for clarity on whether the jobs in their 1,540-person office are at risk left disappointed, according to two employees who attended the hastily assembled virtual meeting.
The career EPA managers on the Teams meeting — organized following reports that the Trump administration plans to cut the majority of the positions in the agency’s Office of Research and Development — appeared to be blindsided by those plans.
Managers on the call, led by Maureen Gwinn, the office’s acting assistant administrator, took questions, but “they didn’t really know anything,” said one EPA employee who was in the meeting. That person was granted anonymity to discuss internal agency conversations.
Another person in the meeting, similarly granted anonymity, said managers were as surprised by the reports as other employees were. The career managers were not consulted on the plans, they told workers, and seemed shocked by their reported scope.
Some of the questions were about the expected timing of layoffs, said the first EPA employee. One staffer on the Microsoft Teams meeting asked, if they got laid off, “Can I still publish my paper?” that person said.
The confusion inside EPA comes as workers in that agency and more broadly across the federal government are concerned about their employment as President Donald Trump and his team pursue dramatic cuts to the workforce.
EPA is expected to be a major target for workforce reductions. Still, the reports of steep cuts to EPA’s science staffers prompted a widespread outcry among the agency’s employees, environmentalists and allies on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
Asked about the internal meeting Tuesday afternoon, EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou said in an email, “I wonder if managers don’t have details because questions are based off fake news and not agency decisions. Crazy food for thought!”
She added, “While no decisions have been made yet, we are actively listening to employees at all levels to gather ideas on how to, better fulfill agency statutory obligations, increase efficiency, and ensure the EPA is as up-to-date and effective as ever.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said Tuesday on Fox Business that The New York Times, which first reported the planned cuts, was “way ahead of their skis on this one,” although he did not directly address details about proposed cuts to the science office.
“A decision is something that we are working through. We will, across all offices of EPA, always look for ways to operate better, more efficiently,” Zeldin said.
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