Trump Is Targeting Key Environmental Employees Who Help Prosecute Polluters

Friday termination notices, abrupt reassignments and the erasure of key environmental websites put the future of policing polluters in doubt.

When Donald Trump was reelected president, civil servants working at the agencies that oversee federal environmental regulations and prosecute corporate polluters anticipated that many things would soon be reversed, just like the last time.

When Trump first arrived at the White House in 2017, his administration stripped the Environmental Protection Agency’s websites of the phrase “climate change,” dismantled science advisory boards, reversed national monument designations and began the slow process of weakening environmental regulations on a range of things from tailpipe emissions to power plant pollution.

What’s happening now, current and former employees and government watchdog groups say, is much worse — and far beyond their worst nightmares.

“Just like 9/11, we had a lack of imagination that they’d use planes as weapons. We had a lack of imagination that they would just just burn the whole damn thing to the ground. It’s far worse than anyone ever even thought,” said Gary Jonesi, a recently retired employee in the EPA’s enforcement office.

This time, it’s not just environmental policies being targeted; it’s people. While Trump has already withdrawn proposed limits on a toxic “forever chemical,” the administration is largely focused on gutting employees and offices responsible for bolstering the legal arguments behind environmental policies and bringing lawsuits against big polluters.