Environmental Safety Company staff penned an open letter to the American public elevating the alarm on President Donald Trump’s dismantling of their company.
“We cannot stand by and allow this to happen,” the employees demanded in an Environmental Well being Information op-ed. “We need to hold this administration accountable to serving the American people, applying the same mandates that we have held our federal workforce and grant recipients to: follow the law, follow the science, and be transparent.”
In keeping with the present and former employees who wrote the letter, the funding cuts—a few of which had been finished beneath the guise of ending range, fairness, and inclusion initiatives—have slashed initiatives that monitored air air pollution and clear consuming water in susceptible communities.
Many of those initiatives already acquired the stamp of approval from Congress and have been cleared within the price range, however the Trump’s administration is refusing to pay up. Now, initiatives that solely relied on authorities funding are coming to a screeching halt.
“Some grant recipients who have lost access to EPA funding had already been working for more than a year on projects that must now be paused,” the letter mentioned.
They then laid out how Trump’s actions are fraudulent and unconstitutional.
“It is a waste of taxpayer dollars for the U.S. Government to cancel its agreements with grantees and contractors. It is fraud for the U.S. Government to delay payments for services already received And it is an abuse of power for the Trump administration to block the IRA laws that were mandated by Congress,” they mentioned.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin hasn’t precisely been on his company’s aspect both. Final week, he slashed his workforce by 150 staff, and he’s planning to fireplace greater than 1,100 scientists.
These firings have already acquired backlash from Democrats, together with Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who referred to as Zeldin’s firings “illegal” and a blatant try and dismantle the EPA’s potential to operate.
“Every decision EPA makes must be in furtherance of protecting human health and the environment, and that just can’t happen if you gut EPA science,” Lofgren mentioned in an announcement supplied to Every day Kos.
And whereas Zeldin is penning diatribes within the Wall Avenue Journal bragging about capturing a “dagger through the heart of climate change religion,” his staff are sharing a special message.
“This is not about defending our paychecks,” they mentioned. “This is about protecting the health of our communities.”
