The US Environment Protection Agency announced the termination of 388 probationary employees hired over a period of past two years mentioning that the move will align with the Trump administration's "energy dominance" policy, according to a Reuters report.
The agency spokesperson Molly Vaseliou said in a statement as cited in the report, "EPA has terminated 388 probationary employees after a thorough review of agency functions in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders."
Since the communication of the layoffs were delivered verbally, there was confusion within the agency. Nearly 200 employees working on environment justice and key websites for tracking areas hardest hit by industrial pollution were earlier put on administrative leave.
The agency's efforts to roll back all the Biden-era policies in the new Trump administration will be led by the EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. Zeldin has a choice of revoking the scientific finding that gives the agency the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants and factories.
The annoucement of the layoffs came at a time when thousands of federal probationary employees working on nuclear safety, consumer protection and wildfire prevention among other environmental issues were given termination notices. According to reports, the Trump administration laid off about 1,200 to 2,000 workers employed in the Department of Energy, including people working at a power grid office, the nuclear security administration and the loans office.
Nearly 325 workers were fired from the department's National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the US nuclear weapons fleet. However, the layoffs have been partly reversed to retain essential nuclear security employees. A copy sent to the laid off employees as cited in Reuters report said, "DOE finds that your further employment would not be in the public interest. For this reason, you are being removed from your position with DOE and the federal civil service effective today."
Another 45 people in the Loan Programs Office which has hundreds of billions of dollars in the loan authority for clean energy, e-vehicle projects and nuclear projects have been fired.
