Environmental Protection Agency staffers who signed a letter criticizing Trump administration policies were placed on leave Thursday.
The EPA said it placed 144 staffers on administrative leave as it investigates the letter.
Recommended Stories
- DOJ moves to block eco groups from halting construction of 'Alligator Alcatraz'
- Energy Secretary Chris Wright to break ground on first US rare earth mine in 70 years
- Oil executives say ‘drill, baby, drill’ isn’t happening, at least not this year
“The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,” EPA spokeswoman Brigit Hirsch said in a statement.
Current and former EPA staffers wrote in a letter Monday that the “administration’s policies ‘undermine the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment'” with concern that the EPA is pandering to those who cause pollution, promoting a culture of fear, reversing the agency’s progress in vulnerable communities, undermining public trust, and dismantling its Office of Research and Development.
“Your decisions and actions will reverberate for generations to come. EPA under your leadership will not protect communities from hazardous chemicals and unsafe drinking water, but instead will increase risks to public health and safety,” the staffers wrote to Administrator Lee Zeldin.
The EPA said Monday that it would “continue to work with states, tribes, and communities to advance the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment.”
“Policy decisions are a result of a process where Administrator Zeldin is briefed on the latest research and science by EPA’s career professionals, and the vast majority who are consummate professionals who take pride in the work this agency does day in and day out,” a spokesperson added.
It also criticized former President Joe Biden’s policies that allegedly attempted “to shut down American energy and make our citizens more reliant on foreign fossil fuels.”
Zeldin told the media in January that anyone who doesn’t want to be at the agency should not be there.
“I don’t believe that anyone should be here at EPA who is not committed to the agency mission and the lawful directives coming from the duly elected president of the United States,” he said.
Union leader Nicole Cantello, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704, representing EPA employees in the Midwest, told The Hill that putting staffers on leave was ”blatant retaliation by the Trump administration.”
“We don’t swear an oath to the Trump administration, we swear an oath to the Constitution, and so we don’t feel like we violated that oath or that we did anything wrong by signing this letter,” she said. She added that some staffers placed on leave are “crucial players in trying to implement Trump’s policies at EPA.”