Trump moves spark fear of brain drain at environment agencies

The incoming Trump administration is sparking fears that agencies tasked with protecting public health and the environment could suffer a "brain drain" — and that more pollution and other harms could occur as a result.

President-elect Trump and his team have vowed to use a tool called “Schedule F” to make it easier to fire career officials. In addition, Trump created a "Department of Government Efficiency" that aims to cut parts of the government that it deems wasteful.

Meanwhile, during the last Trump administration, the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters were moved out of Washington, D.C. — causing a number of federal officials to leave their posts rather than move to the new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colo. The New York Times has reported a similar move is being considered for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this time around.

And Trump has chosen Russell Vought, who has said he wants to “shut down” EPA funding and put federal employees “in trauma,” for a key White House post.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in a video published by ProPublica. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so."

The Trump-Vance transition team did not respond to questions from The Hill regarding its plans for agency headquarters.

However, Brian Hughes, a Trump-Vance transition spokesperson, said in a written statement that the incoming administration “will have a place for people serving in government who are committed to defending the rights of the American people, putting America first, and ensuring the best use of working men and women's tax dollars.”

Advocates worry that the array of Trump administration decisions could lead to weaker federal agencies that are less able to protect people from harm.

“This is a science emergency. … We all need to be worried,” said Jennifer Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“Without federal scientists in place to do that daily work, you will not be able to trust that your medicine is safe, that the water is safe. I live in a hurricane zone — that there may not be scientists there collecting and doing the data analysis to make sure that I know a hurricane is coming,” Jones added.

Civil servants are particularly anxious about Schedule F, said Lilas Soukup, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 1916, which represents Energy Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees.

The new category of federal employment was created by a 2020 Trump executive order that made it easier to hire and fire civil servants who work on policy before President Biden rescinded it.

“The majority of the anxiety … is brought about with the concept of putting Schedule F back in play,” Soukup said.

She added that the maneuver “puts almost every employee just at risk.”

Soukup said that in light of all of the impending changes, people are beginning to look for more stable jobs elsewhere.

Joanna Slaney, associate vice president for political affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund, said that groups like hers are particularly concerned about Trump tapping Vought to serve as the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

“I think Russ Vought wants to use his office to undercut the agency, and if he's successful, that will lead to scientists leaving the EPA and weaker protections for air and water,” she said.

Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said his group is hearing from some workers that they may leave the federal workforce out of concern that their jobs may no longer be stable.

“If they were uncertain about whether to retire now or not, many of them probably will retire or are at least telling us they’ll retire,” Whitehouse said.

“And then there’s the younger staff, many of whom ... we know are out there looking for new jobs because their whole career and whole profession is being stigmatized and denigrated,” he added.

Nicole Cantello, president of the AFGE Local 704, which represents EPA employees in the Midwest, said that during the last Trump administration, many workers left the EPA for other agencies that had “less of a target on their back” and that something similar could happen again.

“It’s very possible that there will be a number of people migrating,” she said. She added that, of the employees who made it through the last Trump administration, “there will be, I believe, a number of folks who will leave the agency in order not to go through that again.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists published a report in 2021 finding that from fiscal 2016 to 2020, the EPA lost 672 scientists, while the Fish and Wildlife Service lost 231 and the U.S. Geological Survey lost 150.

Stan Meiburg, who served as both a career official at the EPA and a political official under the Obama administration, said that a loss of federal employees could ultimately allow some bad actors to pollute without consequence.

“Enforcement is probably the most vulnerable area,” he said, noting both the need for environmental cops' technical expertise and the legal expertise required to decide when to take action.

“It will certainly create greater possibilities for abuse by those who sought to get economic advantage by not complying with environmental law,” Meiburg said.

He also raised concerns about a loss of career staff from the EPA's chemical division, saying this could lead to both rushed reviews potentially causing dangerous chemicals to be allowed onto the market, as well as longer wait times for the approval of new and innovative chemicals if there are fewer people on the job.

“Those particular aspects of science require a lot of skill in evaluation of toxicity studies, translation of animal data to human data and assuming that people even consider epidemiological studies, how to interpret and explain them,” Meiburg said.

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