02/07/2025

Trump to Place at Least 100 EPA Environmental Justice Workers on Leave

Wall Street Journal | Scott Patterson, Shalini Ramachandran, Lindsay Ellis | Feb. 7, 2025

Trump to Place at Least 100 EPA Environmental Justice Workers on Leave

The Trump administration is expected to place more than 100 workers in the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental-justice and civil-rights office on administrative leave, according to people familiar with the matter.

Theresa Segovia, the principal deputy assistant administrator of the division, told staffers Wednesday to expect broad personnel changes this week, two of the people said.

The move, which could come as soon as Thursday, is the outcome of a Jan. 20 executive order aimed at ending diversity, equity and inclusion and other programs the administration says are wasteful. Additional EPA employees in other divisions could also be placed on administrative leave, the people said.

Employees on administrative leave are still on salary and get benefits. Federal agencies are only allowed to place employees on administrative leave for 10 days in a calendar year, according to Peter Jenkins, senior counsel at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. It is unclear what would happen to the employees after 10 days.

Some staffers of the EPA office, which had about 200 employees under the Biden administration, have been informed that the agency is compiling a list of employees who have worked on environmental-justice projects, one of the people said.

The EPA’s plans are fluid and could change as the Trump administration battles unions and citizens groups in court over its efforts to decrease government employees. A number of new EPA workers who had been employed for less than a year were notified last week that the agency “has the right to immediately terminate you,” according to a copy of an email viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The EPA received tens of billions of dollars to spend on climate-related projects from the Biden administration’s 2021 infrastructure package and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The funds were largely aimed at setting the U.S. economy on a path to cut planet-warming greenhouse gases 40% by 2030.

The law also included money for what is known as environmental justice, or helping low-income and historically disadvantaged communities recover from exposure to health risks from industrial activity. Those provisions became a target for Republicans, who said the spending had undefined goals and questioned whether they would provide real benefits for the poor.

Supporters of the programs and of the EPA’s mission to provide a clean and safe environment for Americans said the Trump administration’s hardball tactics run counter to that mission.

“The chaotic witch hunt approach is really upsetting,” said Michelle Roos, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, a Washington-based nonprofit. “The people who suffer are the ones who want to drink clean water and breathe clean air.”

Adam Ortiz, an EPA regional administrator who left in recent weeks, echoed those concerns. “The irony here is for the first time since the New Deal, the federal government invested in thousands and thousands of small towns and rural places,” including many poor, white and heavily Republican communities, he said. “The first month, he’s cutting off exactly the people and programs that gave those places the first lifeline they’ve had in generations.”

On Wednesday, EJScreen, the EPA’s longstanding environmental justice mapping tool to showcase pollution and other environmental stresses in communities across America went dark on its website. Ortiz called the move “unprecedented” and said it had been up for years.

An EPA spokeswoman said the agency is “working to diligently implement President Trump’s executive orders.”

Since Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, the administration has been pressing federal agencies to find diversity and environmental justice workers to push out of the government. The Office of Personnel Management has required federal agencies to close offices that focus exclusively on DEI and place employees of those divisions on paid administrative leave.

Agency leaders were required to submit a list of all DEI employees, and agencies were asked to identify additional staff who worked on those areas during a meeting with OPM staff.

The administration has taken a sledgehammer to the U.S. Agency for International Development. On Tuesday, all of USAID’s Washington facilities were closed as the administration moved to put nearly the entire 10,000 person USAID staff on paid administrative leave.

Education Department employees are also on the chopping block as Trump administration officials weigh executive actions to dismantle the agency.