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 While Trump has already withdrawn proposed limits on a toxic “forever chemical,” the administration is largely focused on gutting employees and offices responsible for bolstering the legal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.
HuffPost has learned that Trump officials have begun targeting staff in key environmental roles for layoffs.
The Trump administration has already shaken up leadership roles and warned employees of potential firings in the Department of Justice’s Energy and Natural Resources Division, or ENRD. The division is partly responsible for bringing lawsuits recommended to it by the Environmental Protection Agency. Lawsuits the division has brought and settled for millions include high-profile cases over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Volkswagen’s emissions scandal and the East Palestine toxic train derailment.
On Friday, employees within the ENRD’s law and policy section were alerted that they would soon be part of a reduction in force, a move that is expected to lead to layoffs, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Rumors of the layoffs were also posted on a Reddit page dedicated to federal workers. The law and policy section is responsible for developing environmental legal polices, consulting with congressional staff over relevant bills and monitoring citizen lawsuits connected to federal environmental laws like the Clean Air Act. Top staff were told verbally that the full team of nearly 20 people would be impacted, and some spent the weekend gathering personal items in their offices in preparation for potential administrative leave.
A former DOJ attorney who is now a senior leader at an environmental NGO and asked to withhold their name to speak openly about information they’d learned from current employees,says the cuts to the law and policy team appear to be part of a broader administrative mandate.
“We’ve seen the Trumpies all over the government going after people who are checks on presidential power — like ethics people and anti-corruption people — and they’re getting rid of those people all over the place,” the former attorney said. “So if you wanted to do that in the environment division, well that’s where you’d start, with Law and Policy.”
“If things continue, there will be a wholesale collapse of federal enforcement of environmental laws.”
– Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Seth Barsky, who oversees the ENRD, also took an early retirement on Friday, according to two sources familiar with the decision. It’s unclear if he accepted the retirement as part of the Voluntary Early Retirement Authority, which was first offered to federal employees in an Office of Personal Management email that same day. Barsky is a career civil servant who has been part of the division for nearly 35 years and was appointed as deputy assistant attorney general in 2022.
Representatives for the ENRD and the DOJ did not respond to requests for comment.
The Friday shake-ups come after the Trump administration abruptly reassigned fourENRD section heads to a newly established “Sanctuary Cities Environmental Working Group” and gave them 15 days to accept the position. Those reassigned included a senior counsel overseeing the Environmental Crimes Section and one heading the Office of Environmental Justice, which was recently established in 2022 under former President Joe Biden. All pages linking to the Office of Environmental Justice have been removed from the DOJ website. The New York Times reported that career employees within the office have also been placed on administrative leave.
In late January, ENRD lawyers were reportedly told to halt all pending litigation, including court filings and new complaints against companies breaking environmental law. The DOJ’s recruitment office also revoked early-career job offers to 10 of the nation’s top law school graduates who were slated to attend a prestigious honors program that in part staffs the ENRD. The last head of the division under Biden had begun his legal career attending that program.
The employment changes are occurring against a backdrop of government-wide buyouts offered by the administration through a period that ends Feb. 6. In an email sent to all federal employees Tuesday and obtained by HuffPost, staff were told that “the majority of federal agencies are likely to be downsized through restructurings, realignments and reductions in force.”
Three former ENRD staffers wrote an open letter Tuesday begging the Trump administration to reconsider the necessity of the staff and the importance of having nonpolitical employees at the helm of the DOJ’s litigation.
“ENRD itself has no policy agenda. ENRD defended EPA when the Obama administration issued the Clean Power Plan. And it defended EPA again when the first Trump administration replaced the Clean Power Plan with its own,” wrote former department lawyers Sommer Engles, Andrew Mergen and Justin Pidot.
“These civil servants—attorneys and support staff numbering close to 600—forgo higher pay and personal prestige, driven by a belief in the power of the federal government to serve the American people. The grief and uncertainty besetting them today is an unspeakable return for their dedicated service,” they wrote. “The Trump administration’s assault on ENRD and the civil service writ large threatens us all.”
Critics worry that these cuts will make environmental enforcement in the federal government nearly impossible, both through staff shortages and a clear interest in moving away from penalizing polluters. They say it’s likely just the tip of the iceberg and that without the DOJ’s enforcement capacity, polluters will essentially receive a get-out-of-jail-free card.
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“I think we’re going to see a breakdown across the whole system, where the federal agencies will be referring very few cases to the Department of Justice, and then there’ll be issues at the Department of Justice with carrying out the enforcement of these actions that the agencies want,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, an environmental nonprofit. “I would predict, over the next few years, if things continue, there will be a wholesale collapse of federal enforcement of environmental laws.”
Whitehouse says his office has been inundated in recent weeks by employees across various agencies concerned about the future of their careers and their work. He says there’s a pervasive sense of fear in which not even the top leaders know what to expect or how to continue their jobs.
“We as a country and as a world have a number of real threats: climate change, diversity loss, the proliferation of toxic chemicals and emerging diseases, and for our civilization to survive we need to be able to address those threats,” Whitehouse said. “And to do so, we need a strong, independent civil service that is able to make recommendations to political leaders based upon the best available science and not feel threatened doing so.”