“We’re here today because me and a bunch of my friends signed a letter to our boss,” said Harper Stanfield, vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3911. “He didn’t like that.”
Stanfield works at the Environmental Protection Agency, and he was one of more than 600 EPA employees who signed the aforementioned letter, demanding that EPA administrator Lee Zeldin “stop undermining EPA and … affirm his oath and his commitment to EPA’s mission.” As a result, 139 of Stanfield’s colleagues were placed on paid administrative leave, and the EPA launched an internal investigation, alleging they signed the “declaration of dissent” letter using their official job titles. (Elected union officials were not placed on leave, and some of the signatories were already on leave at the time.)
Current and former EPA employees joined organized labor and allies at Foley Square in Manhattan last Wednesday for a rally condemning the agency’s actions. Protesters demanded the EPA reinstate its workers and stop undermining the agency’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment. AFGE has also sent a letter to Zeldin characterizing the action as violating First Amendment rights by punishing employees for protected speech.
The administrative leave will remain in effect through July 17, but it may be extended if additional time is needed to conduct the investigation, which Stanfield—a Region 2 EPA employee—described as “an act of political retaliation that we will not allow.” No labor grievance has yet been filed; individual harm is difficult to decipher under federal labor law, given that the employees are on paid leave.
A spokesperson for the EPA told the Prospect that “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.” The EPA also claimed the letter includes misleading information about “agency business.” However, the spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up inquiry into the basis for this claim.
According to sources familiar with the matter, the agency’s investigation is focused on whether the employees signed the letter during official work hours. Although some workers signed the declaration of dissent using their official EPA titles and names, others added their signatures anonymously. Sources told the Prospect that the agency traced the IP addresses of the anonymous signatories to identify them, but since the EPA has limited its comments on the matter to a manicured statement (which it seems to have shared with every news outlet reaching out for further information on the investigation), it’s hard to know if that claim holds any water.
WHEN RICHARD M. NIXON CREATED THE EPA in 1970 and George H.W. Bush overhauled federal environmental protection in the 1980s, it seemed like the GOP cared about the environment. Even Donald Trump called for “clean air, clean water, and jobs” on the campaign trail. But the days of Republicans heeding the wise words of Woodsy Owl—“Give a hoot, don’t pollute”—are long gone.
Zeldin’s EPA leadership has been characterized by a rejection of scientific consensus, curtailment of climate and pollution enforcement, deliberate attacks on environmental justice, personnel losses, and deregulation. In March, the EPA teamed up with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and terminated billions of dollars in grants for energy efficiency upgrades and environmental justice initiatives. Zeldin, a former House member from New York, also attempted to cancel approximately $20 billion in grants awarded through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a green bank established under the Inflation Reduction Act for clean energy and climate-focused projects, but a federal judge blocked the decision in April.
Among the “31 historic actions” initiated by Zeldin’s EPA is “reconsidering” the scientific and legal foundation for carbon regulation, which he described as “the holy grail of the climate change religion.” In 2009, the EPA determined that carbon dioxide, methane, and four other greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health by contributing to climate change. The so-called endangerment finding is rooted in a body of peer-reviewed research on the climate crisis, and it triggered the agency’s legal obligation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Eliminating the endangerment finding would take the EPA out of the climate change battle almost entirely.
Zeldin’s EPA leadership has been characterized by a rejection of scientific consensus, curtailment of climate and pollution enforcement, deliberate attacks on environmental justice, personnel losses, and deregulation.
Unfortunately for Zeldin, the EPA lacks the authority to unilaterally upend the endangerment finding. According to E&E News, the agency must replace the scientific advisory boards it disbanded, gather input from the new board members, solicit public comment, and respond to that feedback “before finalizing the new finding—a year’s work, at least.”
Another example of Zeldin’s EPA leadership concerns the legally enforceable limit of substances allowed in public drinking water. The EPA is primarily responsible for enforcing maximum contaminant level (MCL) standards, which apply to municipal water systems under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Zeldin maintained these obligations, but “maintained” is doing all the heavy lifting in this sentence because he extended the deadline for enforcing them by two years in May. At the time, he also announced plans to rescind MCL standards for four forever chemicals, all of which are linked to cancer, liver and kidney disease, thyroid problems, and developmental issues.
For a guy who said the EPA’s mission is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business,” rolling back regulations that keep people safe and protect the environment certainly tracks.
ZELDIN APPEARS TO BE FAST-TRACKING the destruction of the EPA’s scientific foundation by wreaking havoc on the scientists themselves. He’s keen on cutting over a thousand of them loose as part of his plan to dismantle the EPA’s Office of Research and Development. In essence, the office serves as the brains of the agency’s operations, so reassigning R&D scientists to program offices “will make EPA science more vulnerable to political interference,” per the declaration of dissent.
“The folks I met at EPA could have had jobs anywhere. They are smart, they’re dedicated, and they brought years of experience in science and other fields, but they sacrifice to serve us all,” said Marianne Engelman Lado, former deputy general counsel for environmental initiatives at the EPA under the Biden administration. “This administration makes the ridiculous claim that it’s supposedly slashing the workforce because of waste, fraud, and abuse … What is more wasteful than taking highly trained scientists and having them sit at home?”
Roughly two weeks after the Senate confirmed Zeldin to run the agency, he went ahead and laid off nearly 400 probationary employees—largely consisting of those with less than a year on the job—as part of a broader effort by the Office of Personnel Management and DOGE to fire probationary employees across the federal government. Many federal agencies, including the EPA, muscled fearful workers into either the deferred resignation program (DRP) or voluntary early retirement (VERA). For its part, DRP moved participating employees to administrative leave, allowing them to retain benefits through the end of September. The EPA initially launched its own DRP and reopened it in April, pairing the offering with early-retirement options. In total, more than 3,000 EPA employees—approximately 20 percent of the agency’s workforce—had opted into DRP or early retirement by May.
For the 2026 fiscal year, Zeldin has proposed a “skinny budget” for the EPA, reducing the previous fiscal year’s allocation by 54 percent, a $5 billion cut that would represent the largest in the agency’s history. At a May 14 Senate Appropriations Interior Subcommittee hearing, he defended his plans. The proposed budget, Zeldin said, was the “result of a lot of conversation—a lot of thoughtful conversation,” though it is unclear who exactly he had those conversations with. Moreover, when Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, asked if he had consulted with any states on his budget request for the agency, particularly the hundreds of millions of dollars in additional grants he intends to terminate, Zeldin did not offer specifics.
“Well, I will say: My state and many of the states said this would be devastating, and states cannot shoulder this burden,” said Sen. Murray. “And I look forward to working with this committee to—as we’ve done before, in a bipartisan way—make sure that we fund these programs.”
Zeldin’s skinny budget also proposes the elimination of 1,274 full-time equivalent positions. Somehow, he expects the agency to continue upholding its statutory obligations, which many—including Sen. Murray—have cast doubt on.
“Our budget is looking pretty bleak for next fiscal year,” Suzanne Englot, president of AFGE Local 3911 and attorney-advisor at the EPA, told the Prospect. “We haven’t fully understood or been able to grasp what the impacts of that are going to be, but … it’s really devastating to the work of the agency.”
Moreover, given that the Supreme Court handed down an 8-to-1 ruling on July 8 allowing the Trump administration to proceed with mass reductions in force (RIFs) across federal agencies, Zeldin has the power to implode the EPA at any time.
The vilification of federal workers at the EPA and beyond has had a chilling effect on the government’s workforce. According to AFGE Local 1003 president Justin Chen, simply signing a letter “is clearly not insubordination.” Chen, an environmental engineer at the EPA, told the Prospect the Trump administration “should be ashamed” for penalizing people “who should be lauded as heroes.”
“The way civil servants have been fired is morally unfair,” he said. “These are incredibly intelligent people [who] came to the agency because they believe in the mission.”