Several maneuvers the Trump administration made during its first term to attempt to shrink or hobble the federal workforce are expected to be reprised more effectively this time. That includes potentially designating staffers involved in policymaking as “Schedule F,” effectively making them at-will employees, and seeking to move the agency headquarters out of Washington.
“I think the staff at EPA are in a state of shock. Not because there’s an effort to downsize EPA, but because there’s an effort to smash EPA and to politicize the civil service in a way we’ve never seen before,” said Tim Whitehouse, a former EPA enforcement attorney who now leads the nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.