EPA Suspends over 140 Toxic Employees Who Wrote Letter Denouncing Trump Policies
Team Trump’s swift removal of potentially toxic bureaucrats is certainly the right move to make.
As I have previously reported, President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been busy reversing all the climate cultist policies that harm this nation’s ability to serve and support its citizens.
- Trump’s EPA Ending Obama-Biden War on the American Energy Industry
- Trump Administration Expedites Approval for New Uranium Mine in Utah
- EPA Cancels All Environmental Justice Grants
After six months of watching Trump and various members of his team suspend and terminate federal employees, end the progressive pork distribution agency formerly known as USAID, and otherwise upend the Deep State approach to ruling over American citizens, one might think that federal employees who valued regular paychecks and good benefits would realize “Resistance 2.0” would be a failure.
However, a group of EPA employees clearly weren’t paying attention. The agency has placed 144 staffers on paid leave and launched an inquiry into their participation in signing a letter that accused the Trump administration of politicizing the agency.
The agency said its actions were warranted because the employees had signed the letter using their official titles and because the letter had denigrated the agency’s leadership.
“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 E.P.A. press secretary, Brigit Hirsch, wrote in an email.
The 144 employees received emails on Thursday saying they had been placed on leave for the next two weeks “pending an administrative investigation,” according to a copy of the email reviewed by The New York Times.
“You are required to provide a current email address and phone number so that we can contact you as part of our investigation,” the email said, adding that the staff members would continue to collect paychecks while on leave.
NEWS: EPA places 144 employees on administrative leave pending further investigation, EPA official confirms to @NRO. Zeldin says a “small fraction” of EPA staffers used official work titles to sign onto public letter (linked below) that was “was riddled with misinformation” pic.twitter.com/eRf0vhB3Oq
— Audrey Fahlberg (@AudreyFahlberg) July 3, 2025
Trump campaigned on refocusing the EPA on its original mission and putting an end to the climate-driven excesses the agency had embraced, (especially during the Biden administration). And he won the election. If these individual were truly “brave,” they should have quit (and perhaps taken Trump up on his offer to accept a payout for early retirement) during the administration’s first phase of reducing the size of government.
However, this is how those eco-activists entrenched at the EPA decided to respond.
The letter outlined five key concerns, including that the Trump administration was dismantling the EPA office of research and development, canceling environmental justice programs and grants, making employees fearful, undermining the trust of the public, and “ignoring scientific consensus to protect polluters.”
“These actions directly undermine EPA’s capacity to fulfill its mission,” the letter said.
The employees placed on administrative leave are planning to sue.
More than 170 EPA employees put their names to the document, with about 100 more signing anonymously out of fear of retaliation, according to Jeremy Berg, a former editor-in-chief of Science magazine who is not an EPA employee but was among non-EPA scientists or academics to also sign.
At least 31 workers were escorted out of the Chicago office. A union leader told ABC7 Chicago they will sue the administration for violating their right to freedom of speech.
As Behind the Black‘s Robert Zimmerman notes, Team Trump’s swift removal of potentially toxic bureaucrats is certainly the right move to make.
The best part of this story is two fold. First, these individuals have done a good job of self-identif[ying] themselves as fifth columnists inside the Trump administration, making it easier to get rid of them. Second, the swift response by the Trump administration to remove them illustrates the difference between Trump 45 and Trump 47. In his first term Trump was more willing to tolerate this foolish and undemocratic behavior, and thus that first term was largely ineffective. In his second term Trump ain’t fooling around. From day one he has moved hard to clean house, and this story illustrates this difference most starkly.
And to this I heartily say, thank [G]od!
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Comments
Appropriate Title!!
Actually, it’s not. The title should read: EPA places 144 employees on PAID administrative leave pending further investigation, 10-1 they won’t get fired and this story will just go down the memory hole. Would be nice if the outlets that break stories like this did a follow-up.
I’ll check back in two weeks to see if LI really cares.
Reward your friends. Punish your enemies. I voted for this.
Yes! Purge all who say anything you don’t approve of! After all, Stalin got away with it, right?
So you approve of Federal employees engaging in political partisanship during working hours while using their official job titles?
No wonder you’re a failed lawyer, ya simp.
Yes. Employees who get fired for trash talking their boss on company time using company resources is just like a vicious commie dictator who murdered 30 million of his own people.
Please, come back again to enlighten us with your stellar analysis.
I hope you realize that you are one of the reasons that we can say “retarded” again.
Freedom of speech does not mean no consequences it means the government cannot put you in jail for it. If I go out on social media and say something against my companies policy and in the post identify the company I work for I would expect to be fired. If I make it anonymous enough no one knows who I work for then I wouldn’t. These guys used their official title to publicly denigrate their boss. Any company in the US would fire you for that and the government should also.
If an employee signed a letter trash talking me and criticizing my company, I’d fire them immediately. Leftists need to grow the hell up. You don’t get to be the “resistance” and continue to collect a paycheck.
Yes, because people that publicly attack their employer often keep their jobs.
JR, please slither back under your rock.
“Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of der wimmin.”
Paid leave? So they get a week or so paid vacation?
Stinks, but those are the rules.
I wondered about paid leave, if they are like most people they are not flush, so 2 weeks of no pay would soften them up.
Only because they were made to feel “fearful.”
Have they filed the lawsuit and demanded a TRO yet?
I mean, they took plenty long enough before releasing that letter to have their legal case all ready to go, right?
I’m pretty sure these 144 folks live in a bubble which prevents any self-awareness.
“However, a group of EPA employees clearly weren’t paying attention.”
Democrats with agendas rarely heed reality.
You can’t fix stupid.
Pretty much. Criticize your boss with a public letter anywhere in the private sector and see how long you are employed
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn’t have to produce anything! You’ve never been out of college! You don’t know what it’s like out there! I’ve WORKED in the private sector. They expect *results*.
“…the employees had signed the letter using their official titles…”
The name should be made public so that potential future employers will know not to hire arrogant a**es who think their judgement supersedes that of their employer.
Are you saying that Democrat civil servants are expected to obey the rules? Inconceivable!
Subotai Bahadur
They’re going to sue for “violating their right to freedom of speech”? Which part of ’employees don’t have absolute freedom of speech’ do they not comprehend?
When they speak as private citizens, they do enjoy the right to speak freely. When they speak as agents of the state (like, by using their official titles) that implies they are speaking on behalf of the government. In that circumstance, they enjoy no First Amendment protection.
Exactly. There is a whole raft of “Thou shalt nots” in Federal Civil Service, including the biggie of using your official title when expressing a personal opinion in public that runs counter to the official stance of the agency. You *can* say whatever you want short of slander or libel, but the instant you drag your title into it, you are saying “The US Government thinks thus.” And it’s grounds for being fired for cause, and bouncing on impact like many over the last years have found out. The Biden administration was more than happy to nuke jobs right and left when government employees expressed opinions *without* using their official position.
“the biggie of using your official title when expressing a personal opinion in public”
Brings up an interesting omission. Nowhere in the article does it mention whether this letter was an “open letter” or an internal communication. If it got out to the press, it’s a slam dunk. If it was FIUO, things get murkier.
Even if it was internal, there is a chance that it could – and almost certainly would – be leaked to the press. Always assume that any non-personal communication – verbal, electronic or hardcopy – can be intercepted and/or made public.
An unspoken (or at least quietly spoken) rule that Feds get during onboarding is that everything you say on government email or instant message is *not* private, and (since that email fiasco with IRS commissioner Lois Lerner in 2014) all of the electronic communications are archived for various time periods (mostly 5 years but some 7) for retrieval due to legal action. Everything, including pictures of cats with misspelled captions.
Exactly. Publicly disparaging your chain of command is a firing offense. So good of these employees to self-identify. Of course, the Democrats have gigs lined up for them when they are ultimately fired.
Query : How do you “sign a petition anonymously”?
Other than that, the (D) stance that govt agencies should not be politicized comes quite a few years too late – they’ve been doing it for decades now. Every agency and department has been corrupted by the DEI virus at the least, the EPA in particular also by the Green Energy virus. That last part encouraged stupid boondoggles like requiring EV tech where it’s not a good fit – especially for military usage.
We don’t need more “diversity hires” taking precedence over “meritocracy hires”, we don’t need thousands more EV school busses sitting idle in govt parking lots because they don’t work well in winter conditions, and we don’t need billions more in govt grants going to speculative Green initiatives that default on their govt loans and never produce a physical product.
I’ve read that when civil service protections for federal employees were created, it was with the understanding that said employees would follow the directives of each incoming administration, bowing each new POTUS in recognition of the voters’ authority to steer the country in a different direction. If this is, in fact, true, it would make perfect sense. The rules would prevent an incoming POTUS from wholesale house-cleaning, protecting the long-term job stability of federal workers, while being assured that such house cleaning isn’t necessary knowing the his agenda would be carried out.
Anyone care to comment on the reality of this claim?
That was the theory in 1883 when the Pendelton Act was passed. But reality is partisanship has evolved over more than a century to closely align with ideology – which was not true back then. When partisanship indicates fundamental beliefs and not just which groups get the spoils, that theory doesn’t work.
The theory doesn’t work or the theory isn’t enforced?
That was before JFK gave them the ability to unionize. That is an Executive Order no Republican has ever had the spine to rescind.
So union rules protect employees who refuse the boss’s orders?
In State gov, most supervisors (as low as the second tier of supers from the bottom) are salaried and are not union members. They serve at will. Refuse the direction of the governor or agency director, and you’re gone. If the structure of the federal government is anything like this, it should be the least a POTUS can do – remove any support for bucking the agenda that line personnel find among supervisors by removing those supervisor providing support. Then fire any line personnel who are refusing orders from the new supers (who are aligned with the POTUS’ agenda).
I was an Air Force Individual Mobilization Augmentee Reservist. I worked as an Engineer at an Air Force Air Logistics Center (now Complex) when doing my Reserve Duty amongst rafts of salaried Federal Employees. They were members of the union. There are even unions for salaried professional employees in the totally civilian world. One I know of is the Engineers Union at Boeing (in Seattle/Everette WA).
I may be wrong, but I think that I read in a discussion of this that at some point a Democrat controlled Congress and a spineless President enacted a law to cover Federal Employee Unions and therefore it cannot be undone by simply rescinding JFK E.O.
GTFO and SAD
The Chicago office and their union likely will find a Chicago federal district court judge who will stay their termination. We’ll need to do the usual song-and-dance of appealing to the USSC.
Better just to close the entire office and furlough everyone. Not like we’ll miss ’em.
They put their name and title on paper and shame the President. Who happens to be their boss. The union and these employees cooked this up. It’s obvious because the lawsuit was ready to file the minute they were suspended pending investigation. Let a District Court Judge try to intervene. Just like Murphy in Boston, said Judge will be slapped down.
If nothing else the actions of these employees brings their judgement into question. On that basis alone reduction in grade to non executive, non supervisory positions and/or removal from positions with the ability to influence policy, delay or mitigate its implementation is warranted. Perhaps they could stay on as janitorial staff.
Afraid I have to repeat myself again. Rescind the Obama era Endangerment Finding. It is not defensible on scientific grounds and the climate grift will go on as long as it is allowed to linger.
Yeah, you can thank Massachusetts v. EPA for that. Specifically, Souter, Stevens, Breyer, Kennedy and Ginsburgh.
“A union leader told ABC7 Chicago they will sue the administration for violating their right to freedom of speech.”
The original letter was a set-up, an opening move designed to get the suit filed. They knew they would be placed on paid administrative leave so they are covered.
The plaintiff’s free speech claim is intentional in that these Marxists want to start a new narrative, disrupt the agency, and its business, and then watch themselves being interviewed on TV.
Not sure how their “right to freedom of speech” has been violated in this case. Neither Zelden nor anyone else prevented them from signing the letter. And as far as I can tell the “right to freedom of speech” doesn’t mean they have immunity from the consequences of their speech. They fecked around and are now finding out the consequences of their actions.
Adverse reaction from the government in response to “speech” tends to chill the exercise of the right. This is what is constitutionally objectionable. But that’s not what’s happening here (although that’s what they’re claiming).
These people haven’t been adversely affected for their speech. In their speech they’ve identified themselves as employees unwilling to follow directives/instructions. This is what has drawn the adverse reaction. They can say anything they like about management. But they can’t not fulfill management’s agenda. That’s a refusal to do their jobs.
My thoughts also when I read the article.
Oh! Oh! I am retired HR and Labor Relations. I LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH.
1. Admin leave while we investigate. This shows measured consideration of the offense -no “rush to judgement”
2. Notice of Separation For Cause. Seven days notice, a reply, and out the bums go, fired individually.
Among the reasons for separation:
Federal employees may not use their Government positions,
titles, or authority when signing letters or petitions, writing op-eds, or speaking in their personal capacity.
The charge of conduct unbecoming a federal employee includes any behavior that your employer thinks is unprofessional or detracts from your work.The purpose of this charge is to provide federal agencies a route to adverse action when unusual or small actions become unprofessional or harmful to others, even if no specific rule has been written against them
2A. EPA employees are unionized employees. They are supposed to file grievances through their representatives. A public letter violates the contract. The Union does not HAVE to represent any enployee even if they are dues payers.
2B. Generally speaking, labor contracts do not contain provisions for “class action” complaints regarding disciplinary action of separation. So, unless management agrees, each employee is going to have to challenge their separation individually, through arbitration. That means 140 or so arbitrations, IF the union chooses to take the case. It’ve very expensive to do 140 arbitrations.
This will take (quite seriously) a couple of years to organize. Better, very few contracts (I don’t know about the AFGE/EPA contract) have “Loser pays” arbitration. That means that AFGE must pay half of 140 arbitration costs, each billed separately…even if they win.
3. It is quite likely that (from my experience) an arbitrator will feel that separation is too severe a penalty for this kind of conduct and will reinstate the guilty employee… but since there was misconduct: no back pay for the time between separation and reinstatement.
4. Since the total time involved will realistically be three years or so, it’s not much of a victory even if the employee gets his job back.
Sigh….. so much winning!
Offer them a transfer to Arctic Command or if refused they can stay in the current location but assigned new ‘duties/responsibilities’, due to their demonstrated lack of judgement; cleaning toilets, sweeping the parking lot, raking leaves, painting rocks and so on. Same pay/benefits but not the same duties. Basically a ‘rubber room’ but with productive work.
My thought is that the “Free Speech” suit is being brought because the employee separation angle is an automatic loser.
Here is some interesting from the ABA on the right to free speech vs conditions of employment limitations on speech. It’s too long to quote and too complicated for humble me to summarize adequately. But my reading is that the employees will lose their court case too. Any attorneys care to give an educated analysis, please?
https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/publications/youraba/2017/october-2017/new-aba-fact-checking-site-sets-the-legal-record-straight/
If Director Zeldin’s description of the toxic employees’ poisoned-pen letter to Trump is rife with disinformation is close to accurate, then how can we expect honest scientific assessments from this green snowflake set? Run them all to the house for good. Let ’em sue.
Excellent news! – I spent too much time back in the late 90’s dealing with both EPA and FDA types. Both groups expressed the idea that because of what they do is so important, they are an independent agency from the rest of the government.
If you’re an employee of the executive branch, you report to the chief executive, or as assigned by him.