Imagine you work for the Environmental Protection Agency. You’re a career employee, not a political appointee, and your sole focus is protecting the environment in order to help the public.
Then imagine the dread you feel when you see what’s become of the EPA during Donald Trump’s second term. You can hardly believe your eyes, for example, as the agency reconsiders a ban on cancer-causing asbestos. And cancels grants aimed at protecting children from toxic chemicals. And scraps limits on greenhouse gas emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants. And endorsed weaker standards on coal waste that threatens groundwater.
You shake your head in amazement as these and related right-wing developments unfold under EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin — a former Republican congressman who had no meaningful background in environmental policy, but who has evolved into a “full MAGA warrior,” as The New York Times put it in March.
What do you do under such circumstances? How do you make it clear to Americans that the Trump-era EPA is serving the interests of polluters, and not the public? How do you make it clear that the EPA has lost its way — and, for everyone’s sake, needs to rediscover its intended noble purpose?
The answer for several dozen EPA employees was to sign their names to a “declaration of dissent” early last week, alerting the public to the fact that the Trump administration’s policies “undermine the EPA mission of protecting human health and the environment.” As an NBC News report noted, the joint statement represented a rare public criticism from agency employees “who could face blowback for speaking out against a weakening of funding and federal support for climate, environmental and health science.”
A few days later, the blowback arrived. The New York Times reported:
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday placed 144 employees on administrative leave and opened an investigation into their decision to sign a letter accusing the Trump administration of politicizing the agency. Current and former E.P.A. employees, lawyers and advocates expressed alarm at the development, saying the agency appeared to be ignoring the employees’ First Amendment rights. The politically appointed press office at the agency issued a statement saying it had 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.” To the extent that reality has any bearing on the developments, there is no evidence that the EPA employees did anything “unlawful” or “sabotaged” anything. Nevertheless, according to The Washington Post, those who signed the “declaration of dissent” were “physically escorted out of their workplaces Thursday.” I don’t imagine we’ve heard the last of this one. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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