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15,000 EPA EMPLOYEES REFUSE TO SNITCH ON COLLEAGUES  
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Mark Olalde
May 16, 2025
ProPublica
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_ Trump asked Environmental Protection Agency employees to use a tip
line to identify colleagues working on DEI programs to assist in
slashing them. No employees, then more than 15,000 people strong,
responded to that plea, ProPublica learned. _

Environmental Protection Agency workers protest in front of the
Federal Building in Lower Manhattan against Department of Government
Efficiency firings and cuts, March 25, 2025, Credit: Alex Krales/THE
CITY

 

Days after President Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term,
the acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency sent an email
to the entire workforce with details about the agency’s plans to
close diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and included a plea
for help.

“Employees are requested to please notify” the EPA or the Office
of Personnel Management, the federal government’s human resources
agency, “of any other agency office, sub-unit, personnel position
description, contract, or program focusing exclusively on DEI,” the
email from then-acting Administrator James Payne said.

No employees in the agency, then more than 15,000 people strong
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responded to that plea, ProPublica learned via a public records
request.

Trump has made ending diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility
programs a hallmark effort of his second term. Many federal employees,
however, are declining to assist the administration with this goal. He
signed an executive order
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on his first day back in office that labeled DEI initiatives — which
broadly aim to promote greater diversity, largely within the workplace
— as “illegal and immoral discrimination programs” and ordered
them halted. His pressure campaign to end DEI efforts has also
extended to companies and organizations outside the government, with
billions of dollars in federal funding for universities frozen as part
of the fight
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Corbin Darling retired from the EPA this year after more than three
decades with the agency, including managing environmental justice
programs in a number of Western states.

“I’m not surprised that nobody turned in their colleagues or other
programs in response to that request,” he said, adding that his
former co-workers understood that addressing pollution that
disproportionately impacted communities of color was important to the
agency’s work. “That’s part of the mission — it has been for
decades,” Darling said.

Payne’s note to agency employees listed two email addresses — one
belonging to the EPA and one to the Office of Personnel Management —
where EPA employees could send details about DEI efforts. ProPublica
submitted public records requests to both agencies for the contents of
the inboxes from the start of the administration through April 1.

The Office of Personnel Management didn’t respond to the request,
although the Freedom of Information Act requires that it do so within
20 business days. The agency also did not answer questions about
whether it received any reports to its anti-DEI inbox.

The EPA, meanwhile, checked its inbox and confirmed that zero
employees had filed reports. “Some emails received in that inbox did
come from EPA addresses but none of them called out colleagues who
were still working on DEI matters,” an agency spokesperson said in a
statement in May.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

“The optimist in me would like to believe that maybe it is because,
as an agency, we are generally dedicated to our mission and understand
that DEIA is intrinsic in that,” a current EPA employee who
requested anonymity said. “On the flip side, they’ve done such a
good job immediately dismantling DEIA in the agency that folks who are
up in arms might have just been assuaged.”

Although DEI programs are often internal to a workplace
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the administration also put a target on environmental justice
initiatives, which acknowledge the fact that public health and
environmental harm disproportionately fall on poorer areas and
communities of color. Environmental justice
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has been part of the EPA’s mandate for years but greatly expanded
under the Biden administration.

Research has shown
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that municipalities have planted fewer trees and maintained less green
space in neighborhoods with a higher percentage of people of color,
leading to more intense heat. And heavy industry has often been zoned
or sited
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near Latino, Black and Native American communities
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EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who was confirmed in late January, has
boasted about cutting more than $22 billion in environmental justice
and DEI grants and contracts. “Many American communities are
suffering with serious unresolved environmental issues, but under the
‘environmental justice’ banner, the previous administration’s
EPA showered billions on ideological allies, instead of directing
those resources into solving environmental problems and making
meaningful change,” he wrote in an April opinion piece
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in the New York Post.

The EPA spokesperson said employees with more than 50% of their duties
dedicated to either environmental justice work or DEI were targeted
for layoffs. The agency “is taking the next step to terminate the
Biden-Harris Administration’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and
Environmental Justice arms of the agency,” the spokesperson said.

EPA environmental justice offices worked on a range of initiatives,
such as meeting with historically underserved communities to help them
participate in agency decision-making and dispersing grants to fund
mitigation of the carcinogenic gas radon or removal of lead pipes,
Darling explained.

“A sea change isn’t the right word because it’s more of a
draining of the sea,” Darling said. “It has devastated the
program.”

I cover the environment, natural resources and public health around
the Southwest.

Mark Olalde [[link removed]] covers
the environment, natural resources and public health around the
Southwest.

_ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign
up
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for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your
inbox._

* epa
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* Trump Administration
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* DEI
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