President Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested his administration might squeeze EPA’s workforce to its smallest size since the Nixon administration.
The prospect of a 65 percent cut to the agency’s staff — which Trump mentioned in a White House Cabinet meeting Wednesday — is a dream come true for some conservatives who have long advocated for shrinking the regulatory agency.
But the public declaration that the administration might eliminate most of the agency tasked with cleaning up toxic waste and regulating air and water pollution stunned EPA’s employees and its champions, who warn that the agency would be unrecognizable at that size and wouldn’t be able to fulfill its mission.
“That’s just devastating,” Nicole Cantello, president of a union local that represents EPA employees, said of Trump’s suggestion.
Cantello, who said she hadn’t heard the 65 percent figure floated previously, said cuts at that level would be “crippling to the agency and to the ability of the agency to protect human health and the environment.”
Trump “let the cat out of the bag,” said Jeremy Symons, a senior adviser at the Environmental Protection Network, a group of EPA alumni that has been critical of Trump’s policies.
“This was their secret plan,” Symons added. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin “hasn’t said anything publicly, because they know the public will be outraged. It’s shocking to see them actually admit that they want to destroy the agency.”
Trump and Zeldin “are in lock step in creating a more efficient and effective federal government,” an EPA spokesperson said Wednesday in response to a question about the possibility of a 65 percent staff cut.
“Compared to 2024, the total amount spent year over year at EPA will deliver significant efficiencies to American taxpayers by cutting wasteful grants, reassessing the agency’s real estate footprint, and delivering organizational improvements to the personnel structure,” the spokesperson said.
Myron Ebell, who led the EPA transition team ahead of the first Trump administration, has long hoped for cuts of this magnitude.
“These ideas have been floating around, but they haven’t taken shape yet,” Ebell said Wednesday.
During Trump’s first administration, Congress largely blocked major cuts to the EPA. But Ebell and others are hopeful that lawmakers will be more receptive this time around.
“It’s a new world,” Ebell said. “It’s really different than Trump 1.”
EPA’s backers hope the enormity of the cuts floated by Trump will fuel a public outcry.
“This is going to wake a lot of people up to the stakes,” Symons said. “We’re talking about everybody in America who has a kid with an inhaler, a relative with lung disease or that depends on EPA keeping their drinking-water supply safe.”
With only 35 percent of its current staff, “it would be impossible” for EPA to be able to provide the services that people depend upon, said Matthew Davis, a former EPA scientist who’s now vice president of federal policy at the League of Conservation Voters.
“There would be no inspections of polluting facilities. There would be no inspections or cleanups at toxic waste sites,” Davis said. “There would be massive vulnerabilities around radiation events, the list goes on and on.”
Davis thinks it would be “nearly impossible to get even Republican caucus agreement” on cuts this steep.
“Would they get agreement from the handful of most radical, extreme members of the House or Senate Republican Caucus? Sure, maybe,” Davis said. But “would this fly with the majority of their members? I don’t think so.”
Inside the EPA, Trump’s comments had immediate impacts.
Cantello’s phone started blowing up soon after the president’s remarks, she said Wednesday.
“There’s a measure of disbelief” among her colleagues at EPA, she said, where the Trump administration has already terminated staff. “Now, everyone’s afraid that they’re going to get fired and that their work will be left by the wayside.”
