The mood was dark at a meeting in the city hall that the Environmental Protection Agency called on Tuesday. The gathering came one day after the New York Times reported bomb Li Zeldin, the agency’s official, plans to dismantle the Research and Development Office, which cancels 50 to 75 percent of the 1500 chemists, poison scientists, biologists, and other experts. The administration, which is conducting basic research to inform federal policies, plays an important role in the agency’s mission to protect public health and the environment. The layoff of most of its employees, and many of them are professional scholars, will leave the Environmental Protection Agency without the independent and strict science necessary to develop effective regulations. No one of the office leaders consulted about the plan.
Mourin Join, Who leads The Research and Development Office, or Ord, is not a political appointment, and its team learned about the details of the proposal when they read it at times. The managers quickly prepared a comprehensive preparation with the department’s employees for discussion.
“There was no preparation,” said Holly Wilson, an environmental protection agency and head of the Federation who represents her employees. “They were neglected, and they wanted to behave as good leaders, who wanted to gather their people and add some context about what happened.”
Employees were contacted from all over the country in the call, which lasted about 30 minutes. They wanted to know when the workers will start, and how they would be notified if they are terminated, and whether the acquisitions will be presented. Someone asked if they could publish their research after they were expelled. The administration had a few specific answers.
The Times reports were based on the documents submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency to the House of Representatives Committee for Science, Space and Technology. The proposal, which was submitted to the White House last week and can change in the coming days, calls for dissolving the search office, launching most of its employees, and re -appointing those who remain in other roles. Under the plan, the agency will seek to give up the standard notification period in half for a “power reduction” from 30 to 60 days.
Wilson said: “We do not know which jobs, and which pieces will disappear and which remains,” Wilson said. “Understanding is what causes a lot of anxiety.”
This is the latest assault on the agency. Over the past two months, the Trump administration has launched more than 400 test workers, only for their return after the court has imposed it. The agency also I closed the Environmental Justice Office and Funding for the various climate Programs.
EPA employees were preparing for these changes. In implementing President Donald Trump’s executive order to reduce the federal workforce, the Management and Budget Office The required agencies to submit the second stage From the “power reduction” plans by April 14. The Research and Development Office is the largest department within the agency, and it is often the subject of presidential efforts to form or expand it. Project 2025, conservative plan for Trump’s second chapter, specifically predicted ongoing events. Recommend Eliminate “many offices and programs,” The administration called “the inflated, uneven, closed, driven by the results, hostile to public and legislative inputs, and tend to follow the political and not purely scientific goals.”
However, the proposed retreat scale has caught almost everyone. “What is new is the extremist nature of this,” said a senior Environmental Protection Agency official, who asked not to be identified. “This is not designed to reduce expenses, and is designed to destroy” the section.
Democrats have declined, under the pretext that the office’s functions are protected and eliminated illegal. “Every decision that the Environmental Protection Agency is in the event of promotion to protect human health and the environment, and this cannot happen if you are the intestine of the Environmental Protection Agency.” “Donald Trump and Eileon Musk put basic lines for their friends on the health and safety of the Americans.”
Republican members of the committee did not respond to the requests for comment. The Heritage Foundation, or the main support of the project 2025, or the Environmental Protection Agency was not.
Supports Research and Development Office Six research programs Through offices In 10 facilities. It works alongside the Environmental Protection Agency offices that oversee air and water quality, chemical safety, toxic chemicals, children’s health, and its research department responsible for answering the main questions that others depend on the agency to develop policies. This division of duties allowed them to produce independent science details, among other things, the health effects of algae blossom, exposure to soot, and toxic chemicals such as a hexagonal chrome, Ethylene oxideFormaldehyde, chloroprene.
This work provides the basis for many environmental and public health regulations that protect people worldwide. For example, her work was essential in organizing fluores and polyfluoroalkyl material Pfas And the title of “chemicals forever” because it is not easily decomposed in the environment. Nearly two decades ago, researchers at the Environmental Protection Agency gathered water samples along the Kippe Fair River in North Carolina, where A chemical facility has been discharged from its waste. They found these chemicals in the samples, and in the nearby drinking water supplies. This research showed the spread of PFAS and that the public was exposed to it through drinking water.
Jennifer Urmi-Zavalita, who worked at the Environmental Protection Agency for 40 years, said the Research and Development Office helped to develop ways to identify and measure PFAs in the environment, understand the risk of human exposure, and develop technologies that it would destroy. He led the search office during part of President Trump’s first term. Last year, the agency set up the completion of The first rules governing the levels of PFAs in drinking water.
Urmi-Zavalita said the office “played a big role in describing our awareness of pollution of our environment with PFAs.”
Without the research office, it is not clear where the Environmental Protection Agency may turn into scientific analysis. To some extent, officials can increase decisions as a policy instead of searching for science, reducing or overcoming it completely. Some jobs can be transformed into other parts of the agency, such as the Chemical Safety and Protection Office, which is now headed by Nancy Beck, Previous chemical industry pressure groups. The government can also depend simply on the sciences that are organized by the same industries.
The senior official said: “This is the fox guarding the chicken house,” said the senior official. “The Environmental Protection Agency made critical decisions that define our general health. Do you want those who were informed by rumors in industry or real facts?”
The elimination of the Research and Development Office is more suggested by the Trump administration to reshape the Environmental Protection Agency – but it is unlikely to be the last. The Research Office represents only 10 percent of the agency’s resources, according to ORME-Zavaleeta, a short road towards Zeldin’s declared goal From eliminating 65 percent of the agency’s spending. “Many shoes will decrease.”
