Talk to any federal worker for long enough and you’ll eventually hear them say the word “mission.” Regardless of who’s in office, those on the ground floor of these agencies and departments always seem to maintain a crystal-clear vision of what their institution’s objectives are, and what their individual role is in achieving them.
The Environmental Protection Agency is like that and even more so, as it’s stocked with more than its share of highly trained engineers, scientists, and other experts who have been working to realize the agency’s goals–clean air, clean water, environmental justice—under Democratic and Republican presidents alike since it opened its doors under Richard Nixon.
That all ended in January, when the Trump administration deemed that mission inherently political, too “woke.” As at many agencies, any mention of diversity, equity, and inclusion was stripped from grants and projects in an effort to keep them from being slashed by DOGE or Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders. Staff were told to change every mention of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Pride flags were removed from desks. The administration had made a concerted effort to frame EPA employees as mindless, robotic, woke bureaucrats who were contributing to the rampant “waste, fraud, and abuse” in the federal government.
The job, said one anonymous EPA worker, had never been the kind of thing you just clock in and out of every day. “You’re doing it because you believe in it. And all of that even feels like it’s been taken from us. You know, we’ve been demoralized. It’s demotivating,” the employee said. “They have, like, stripped all of that workplace culture and all of that identity from us when they muddy the mission, and all of a sudden, we’re promoting AI and the auto industry, and we’re deregulating things, and we’re saying greenhouse emissions shouldn’t be regulated. You identify so much with that mission, and now it’s just like, it makes you feel lost. You’re like, what are we even doing here?”
On the last day of June, 144 EPA workers decided to do something. After countless hushed office whispers, weekend meetups, and Signal group chats, the workers produced a Declaration of Dissent against EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and the Trump administration, putting their very livelihoods at risk in the process. The letter outlines five of the workers’ most pressing concerns: an undermining of public trust; a preference for polluters over scientific facts; the rescinding of allegedly woke environmental justice measures for poor communities; the dismantling of the Office of Research and Development, which provides the scientific backup for the agency’s rulings; and, perhaps most importantly, the administration’s promotion of a culture of fear at the agency. These workers were courageous enough to sign the letter with their full names. All 144 of them were promptly placed on administrative leave while the EPA conducted an “investigation.”
The EPA’s response to the letter only serves to prove the workers’ point. Hundreds of employees signed onto the statement to report a culture of fear in the workplace. The administration squashed that basic First Amendment expression aggressively and instead investigated every signer to try and nail them for the misdeed of planning and/or signing the letter on company time or with company tech—something none of the seasoned employees at the EPA were foolish enough to do. The situation as of this writing is highly fluid, with no new information or updates from the EPA’s so-called investigation. Some employees plan on returning; some have fully moved on. But each of the declaration’s signatories has likely come away from this retribution with a new perspective, as they realize that the neutrality of the EPA’s old mission is long gone. As of late August, the administration has started to fire some of the suspended workers.
“We knew nobody was coming to save us. Nobody is coming to defend EPA and federal employees, we have to take action ourselves…. I am disillusioned with the whole system,” a declaration signee said. “Clean air, clean water, protecting our environment, that’s bipartisan. So why has it become such a divided thing? We should unite over all of our commonalities and take back our power.”
