Following the mass firing of hundreds of thousands of U.S. federal workers, a former EPA advisor has offered a grim outlook for what it will mean for the environment.
What's happening?
Over 280,000 federal employees have lost their jobs since January 2025, as detailed by an April report from Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, Inc. This massive job loss is a result of the Department of Government Efficiency's directive to eliminate positions in the federal government.
After becoming the leader of DOGE, Elon Musk said the department had a goal to cut $1 trillion in government spending by Sept. 30.
However, as of April 25, with Musk announcing he is stepping back from DOGE to focus more on Tesla and reports indicating that the vast majority of DOGE's major cuts have been tallied, DOGE said on its website that it had achieved $160 billion in government savings. The organization said that translates to a savings of $993.79 per American who pays taxes, though that number includes both one-time cuts and ongoing annual salaries of fired employees.
Despite this savings total reaching 16% of its target, $160 billion is still a lot of money that was going toward funding the work of several federal agencies, and the cuts have hit them hard. Departments such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency have seen significant reductions of their workforces, with The New York Times keeping a handy tally.
Why is the workforce cut important?
While some have praised the cuts as making an attempt to drive down the national deficit, in an interview with the Federal News Network, former EPA science advisor Chris Frey detailed the concerning impacts that many of the recent government workforce cuts will have on the American public.
Frey also weighed in on how the DOGE cuts have been handled, saying "it's just completely reprehensible the way that career staff have been threatened and treated and intimidated and devalued where they really could be an ally for really any administration."
According to Frey, the cuts to the EPA have waved away the accomplishments of the agency that may have gone unnoticed, such as enforcing clean air and water regulations, as it's hard to evaluate sicknesses and deaths that never happened.
"I think a challenge for the agency, in its 55 years of existence, is that it is so busy doing the work that it needs to do. One thing it doesn't do as well as it could is really just educate folks on the mission and why it's so important," Frey said.
"When people are surveyed and asked about their opinion about [the] EPA and EPA's mission is to protect human health and the environment and to do so based on science and the law. And it affects all Americans."
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Definitely 👍 Since being established in 1970, the EPA has had a hand in developing and enforcing countless environmental regulations that have worked to combat increasing global temperatures. The EPA has sought to clean up our waterways, reduce harmful pesticide exposures, and limit dangerous industrial pollution.
What's being done about the workforce cut?
Following the beginning of the DOGE cuts, there have been several efforts to support federal workers included in the firings. In March, a pair of judges ordered the Trump administration to rehire thousands of employees. However, that ruling has since been paused by the Supreme Court.
As noted by Frey, the EPA was just one of many vital government agencies to feel the impacts of the cuts. Other clear examples include the FDA's cuts leading it to announce it can no longer afford to test milk for quality control.
"I mean, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which produces weather forecasts and oceanographic data that supports navigation and so on," Frey explained. "The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the list goes on and on."
Frey suggests that these agencies may simply be taken for granted by the general public at the moment, without necessarily realizing the value they provide for the dollar, with around 160 million people paying taxes and thus those billions supporting such a large country. But their cuts will be felt wide and far.
"There are so many science-based agencies and I think people just don't really recognize how much these agencies affect their day-to-day life," Frey said, "but they will recognize it when it's gone."
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