A few days after President Donald Trump swore for a second term, acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency sent an electronic message to the entire workforce with details about the plans for the closure of diversity, capital and inclusive initiatives and included a request for help.
“Employees are asked to report” EPA or Management Management, Federal Government Agency, “any other agency’s office, subdivision, staffing, contract or program oriented exclusively on Dei,” said an electronic message to James Payne.
No staff in Agency, then more than 15,000 people stronglyResponded to this request, Propublica learned at the request of public records.
Trump has made the explanation of diversity, justice, inclusion and accessibility of his second term. However, many federal staff refuse to assist the administration for this purpose. He signed the executive order On his first day, in the post, which marked the initiatives of Dei – which generally seek to promote greater diversity, mainly in the workplace – as “illegal and immoral discrimination programs” and ordered them to be stopped. His DEI’s Effort Pressure Company has also spread to the company and organization by government, With billions of dollars in federal financing for universities frozen as part of the fight.
This year, Corbin Darling left EPA after more than three decades with the agency, including the Environmental Program Management in a number of Western states.
“I am not surprised that no one appealed to their colleagues and other programs in response to this request,” he said, adding that his former employees realized that the agency was important for the pollution that was disproportionate to the community. “It’s part of the mission – it was decades,” Darling said.
Paine’s Note Agency Employees List two email addresses – one belonging to the EPA and one to the staff management department – where EPA staff could send detailed information about Dei efforts. Propublica has submitted requests for public records to both agencies for postcards content from the start of the administration until April 1.
The personnel management management did not respond to the request, although the Law on Freedom of Information requires it to do so within 20 working days. The agency also did not answer questions about whether he received the reports in his Anti-Dei mailbox.
Meanwhile, the EPA checked the mailbox and confirmed that zero employees had reported. “Some messages received in this mailbox came from the EPA addresses, but none of them caused colleagues who still worked on Dei’s questions,” the agency’s press secretary said.
The White House did not respond to a comment request.
“The optimist in me would like to believe that perhaps this is because, as an agency, we are usually devoted to our mission and understand that Deia is our own,” said the current EPA employee who asked for anonymity. “On the other hand, they did such a good job, immediately demonstrating Deia in the agency that people who are in service could only be entrenched.”
Although Dei’s programs are often internal for workplaceThe administration also set out for environmental justice initiatives, which recognize the fact that public health and environmental health are disproportionately entering the poor areas and colored communities. Environmental Justice It has been part of the EPA mandate for many years, but has been significantly expanding within the Biden administration.
Studies have shownFor example, the municipalities planted fewer trees and supported less green space in the neighborhoods with a higher percentage of people, which led to a more intense heat. And the heavy industry was often bona or housed next to Latin American, black and Indigenous US communities.
The EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, which was confirmed in late January, boasted that he reduced more than $ 22 billion of environmental justice and Dei grants. “Many US communities suffer from serious unresolved environmental problems, but within the banner of” environmental justice “, the previous administration shook billions on ideological allies, instead of sending these resources to solving environmental problems and make significant changes,” – He wrote in April’s opinion In New York.
The EPA press -secretary said that employees with more than 50% of their duties on either environmental justice or dei were aimed at dismissal. The agency “takes the next step to stop the diversity, justice, justice, justice and inclusion and environmental justice,” the spokesman said.
EPA ecological justice services worked on a number of initiatives, for example, a meeting with historically insufficient communities to help them participate in agencies’ decision -making and scattering grants to finance the softening of the carcinogenic gas radon or remove lead pipes, Darling explained.
“Changing the sea is not the right word, because it is rather a sea drain,” Darling said. “It devastated the program.”
