Days after President Donald Trump has sworn his second term, the interim chief of the Environmental Protection Agency sent an email to the entire workforce with details about the agency’s plans to close diversity, equity and included a pea.
“Employees are requested to notify” the EPA or the Office of Personnel Management, the Federal Government’s Human Resources Agency, “or any other agency office, subunit, personnel position, contract or program that focuses on jamny”, The Emaclativevily.
There are no employees in The agency, then more than 15,000 strong peopleHe responded to that plea, Propublic learned through a request for public records.
Trump has made the final programs of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility a distinctive effort or its second mandate. However, many federal employees are refusing to help administration with this goal. Hey Signed an executive order On his first day back in the position that he described the initiatives ofi, which they aim to promote greater diversity, largely within the workplace, such as “illegal and immoral discrimination programs” and ordered them to stop. His pressure campaign to end Dei’s efforts has also extended to companies and organizations outside the government, With billions of dollars in federal funds for frozen universities as part of the fight.
Corbin Darling retired from the EPA this year after more than three decades with the agency, including the management of environmental justice programs in several Western states.
“I am not surprised that no one gave his colleagues or other programs in response to that request.” He said that his former co -workers understood that addressing pollution that disproportionately impacted color communities. “That is part of the mission, it has one leg for decades,” Darling said.
Payne’s note for agency employees lists two email addresses, one belonging to the EPA and another to the Personnel Management Office, where EPA employees could send details about Dei’s efforts. Propublic submitted public record requests to both agencies for the content of the entrance trays from the beginning of the administration until April 1.
The Office of Personnel Management did not respond to the application, although the Law of Freedom of Information requires that it do so within 20 business days. The agency also did not answer questions about whether he received any report to his anti-dei input tray.
Meanwhile, the EPA verified its inbox and confirms that Zero employees had submitted reports. “Some emails recovered in that entrance tray come from the directions of the EPA, but none of them called the pans that were still working on Dei’s affairs,” said a spokesman for the agency in a statement in May.
The White House did not respond to a request for comments.
“Optimists in me would like to believe that perhaps it is because an agency is generally dedicated to our mission and we understand that Deia is intrinsic in that,” said a current EPA employee who required anonymity. “On the other hand, they have done a good job immediately dismantling Deia in the agency that people who are in arms could have relieved their legs.”
Althegh programs are often internal to a workplaceThe administration also placed an objective on environmental justice initiatives, which recognize the fact that public health and environmental damage disproportion themselves in poorest areas and communities. Environmental Justice It has been part of the EPA mandate for years, but expanded greatly under the Biden administration.
The investigation has demonstratedFor example, that the municipalities have planted Ferwer trees and maintained less green space in the neighborhoods with a higher percentage of color people, which leads to a more intense heat. And the heavy industry has a leg area or located Near Latin, black and American native communities.
The administrator of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, who was confirmed at the end of January, boasted to reduce more than $ 22 billion in environmental justice and subsidies and contracts of Dei. “Many American communities are suffering serious unresolved environmental problems, but under environmental justice, the EPA of the previous administration showed billions in ideological allies, instead of the socket of the socale and mhake sockets. Hello in an opinion article in April In the New York Post.
The EPA spokesman said that employees with more than 50% of their duties dedicated to environmental justice work or were attacked for dismissals. The agency “is taking the next step to finish the diversity, equity and inclusion and environmental justice of the Agency Biden-Harris administration,” said the spokesman.
The EPA Environmental Justice Offices worked on a variety of initiatives, such as meeting with historically unattended communities to help them participate in the agency’s decision -making and dispersion subsidies to finance the mitigation of exploited carcinogen exploited, dear, dear, dear.
“A sea change is not the right word, it is more a drain of the sea,” Darling said. “He has devastated the program.”
