Over 1,000 Environmental and Protection Agency (EPA) employees hired under the Biden administration have received emails stating they could be fired immediately, the New York Times reports.
Some of the employees were hired to implement Biden’s Marxist climate policies and the Trump administration’s American First government may not need them. Some of them were working on projects related to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, of which over $369 billion was earmarked for various green energy initiatives, including curbing greenhouse emissions, offering tax credits, and promoting green energy adoption.
According to EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou, the incoming Trump EPA administrator former Rep. Lee Zeldin wants to restore accountability and transparency.
“Our goal is to be transparent,” Vaseliou said, adding that Zeldin “engaged directly with career staff across EPA’s headquarters — spanning two city blocks in downtown DC — listening to their insights and perspectives.”
“Ultimately, the goal is to create a more effective and efficient federal government that serves all Americans,” she added.
Zeldin had stated that his priority was to get EPA employees back to office in person. Trump recently signed an executive order requiring all federal employees to end the Biden-era work policy allowing them to work from home. The EPA was among the most notorious offenders with a mere 8% of employees showing up daily to attend to Americans from Monday to Friday.
“Operationally, it’s important to get employees back into the office and working and collaborating,” Zeldin stated. “I’ve been told that the EPA building is often at about 20% capacity on any given day. I’ll be able to confirm that firsthand once I’m in the building.”
However, EPA’s executive director Michelle Roos described Zeldin’s attempt to get federal employees to report for duty in person as a “vindictive purge of public servants.”
Similarly, Marie Owens-Powell, who represents the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), was looking at legal avenues to prevent the termination of federal employees on probation who do not want to report to the office for their duties.
“Hybrid work has been so successful that many agencies have been working to consolidate unused office space and sell off properties that are costly to maintain,” said AFGE’s president Everett Kelley. EFGE has already filed a lawsuit to prevent employees from being easily fired.
It does not seem as if the EPA is running out of office space when only 8% of its employees regularly show up for work. Most Americans who pay EPA employees’ salaries do not have the privilege of working from home.
“If you exclude security guards & maintenance personnel, the number of government workers who show up in person and do 40 hours of work a week is closer to 1%!” Musk stated. “Almost no one.”
Similarly, a House Oversight and Government Reform report found American taxpayers were spending over $7 billion in renting office space, of which 17 of 25 federal agencies utilized less than a quarter.
Elon Must-led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), also found that only between 9% and 49% of office building capacity was being utilized. Federal employees also demanded over $400,000 after falsely claiming they resided in Washington D.C., receiving an addition 33.9% pay for allegedly residing in the capital.
Nonetheless, excusing federal employees from regularly reporting to work was not the solution, when many Americans grapple with poor service delivery.
For example, remote work always results in poor communication, distractions at home, and technological issues when accessing company resources. It also has been linked to cybersecurity problems when remote employees use personal devices to access company resources.
