Federal environmental scientists have been “left largely defenseless.” Their jobs abruptly terminated. Their research and policy advice igno
Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:
Federal environmental scientists have been “left largely defenseless.” Their jobs abruptly terminated. Their research and policy advice ignored, manipulated or suppressed. Their agency captured by the industry it’s obligated to regulate.
That’s the assessment of the Office of Inspector General, or OIG, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s government watchdog, and two nonpartisan, nonprofit groups made up of former federal staff: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Environmental Protection Network (EPN).
In February, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that his “Powering the Great American Comeback” Initiative would achieve EPA’s mission—to protect human health and the environment—“while energizing the greatness of the American economy.”
The following month Zeldin—who received nearly $205,000 from the oil and gas industry during his four terms as a Republican congressman in New York, according to OpenSecrets—launched the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history,” promising “reconsideration” of regulations on oil and gas wastewater, greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, among other environmental protections.
On top of these rollbacks, EPA cancelled billions in congressionally authorized grants and fired thousands of career staff, in line with the vision of Project 2025, a policy blueprint to dismantle the administrative state that was organized by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank bent on “cooling the climate hysteria.”
Citing attacks on the public servants and programs critical to EPA’s mission, environmental experts delivered a dire message at a briefing this week on autocratic abuses of power: The fate of their work hinges on their ability to combat the rise of authoritarianism in the United States.
“We are seeing an unprecedented and illegal purge of nonpartisan federal workers,” said Joanna Citron Day, general counsel at PEER, “and it’s getting worse.” “PEER is challenging the Trump administration’s illegal attempt through executive order to allow the president and his political appointees to fire civil servants and replace them with loyalists,” Citron Day said. “PEER is also fighting against loyalty oaths as a basis for federal service.”
The Trump administration’s actions threaten public health and the environment by eliminating the nonpartisan federal workers who create and enforce regulations across government, the panelists said at the briefing organized by PEER with EPN and Next Interior, a new organization founded for former Department of the Interior scientists.
“We are in an authoritarian state,” said PEER executive director Tim Whitehouse at the briefing.
