On July 3, 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) placed 144 employees on a two-week leave, “pending an administrative investigation,” after the employees signed onto a letter critical of the Trump administration.
The letter, sent to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on June 30, accused the agency’s leadership of “undermining the EPA mission.” It outlined five primary concerns: (1) that EPA’s “communication platforms have been used to promote misinformation and overly partisan rhetoric” which “distracts from EPA’s core responsibility: to protect human health and the environment” and undermines public trust in the agency; (2) that EPA has ignored “scientific consensus to benefit polluters,” (3) that, by cancelling environmental justice programs, EPA “is failing to serve the American people” and “[r]eversing EPA’s progress in America’s most vulnerable communities,” (4) that Administrator Zeldin’s proposed reorganization of EPA’s Office of Research and Development will make agency “science more vulnerable to political inference,” and (5) that Administrator Zeldin has promoted “a culture of fear” within EPA, which has resulted in agency staff being “unable to do their jobs.”
An agency spokesperson defended the disciplinary actions, stating that “[EPA] 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.” A representative from the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, which represents more than 8,000 EPA workers, called the agency’s moves “clearly an act of retaliation.”