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“We Feel Terrorized”: What EPA Employees Say About the Decision to Stay or Go Under Trump

by ProPublica | February 6, 2025
The administration is planning to remove civil service protections from certain federal workers, which would allow some positions now held by highly skilled personnel to be reclassified so they could be filled based on loyalty to the administration rather than expertise. The move could ...

Civil society is coming to the rescue of the civil service

by Heads Up News | February 5, 2025
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which supports public employees whose work involves the environment, natural resources, and public health, are trying to help workers one at a time. “We’re getting inundated with calls from public employees about how to address ...

Trump to Place at Least 100 EPA Environmental-Justice Workers on Leave

by The Wall Street Journal | February 5, 2025
Employees on administrative leave are still on salary and get benefits. Federal agencies are only allowed to place employees on administrative leave for 10 days in a calendar year, according to Peter Jenkins, senior counsel at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. It is ...

Trump Is Targeting Key Environmental Employees Who Help Prosecute Polluters

by Huffington Post | February 5, 2025
“I think we’re going to see a breakdown across the whole system, where the federal agencies will be referring very few cases to the Department of Justice, and then there’ll be issues at the Department of Justice with carrying out the enforcement of these actions that the agencies ...

Trump’s proposed EPA leadership stacked with lobbyists and attorneys

by The Guardian | February 5, 2025
The consequences for the attacks on the EPA and other agencies are “all connected”, said the former EPA official Kyla Bennett, now with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility non-profit. “By cutting the Clean Water Act and wetland protection, flooding is going to be ...

GOP Officials Privately Admit Trump’s Federal Buyout Plan Violates Federal Law

by Black Press USA | February 4, 2025
“This email is another ill-motivated effort to get as many federal employees to quit as soon as possible,” said Peter Jenkins, senior counsel for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). “OPM has no legal authority to reliably claim that the Trump administration will ...

Critics raise stink over sewage-sludge fertilizer

by Courthouse News Service | January 31, 2025
The plaintiffs in the case never applied biosolids on their own properties, said Laura Dumais, a staff attorney with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility who is representing them. Instead, their land was contaminated by runoff from neighbors. “Shortly after this material was ...

Federal workers reeling over Trump’s ‘buyout’ offer: ‘This is the last lifeboat in town’

by Politico | January 30, 2025
Tim Whitehouse, the executive director at the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit that provides legal services to federal workers, said he had been fielding calls on the resignation request since it became public. “The employees we are speaking to view this ...

Watchdog Group Issues Stark Warning for U.S. National Parks

by Fodor's Travel | January 30, 2025
Data released by the National Park Service (NPS) last summer was included in a report by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) that indicates ranger staffing in National Parks is already at its lowest level this century. In 2024, there were 1,200 park rangers across the ...

EPA employees told to pause most external communications and cancel meetings with outside parties

by Government Executive | January 29, 2025
Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility said the communications pause and other Trump administration actions affecting the federal workforce writ large would benefit corporations and individuals who oppose environmental enforcement. “ ...

Maryland’s Renewable Energy Program: More Smoke and Mirrors Than Wind and Solar, New Report Alleges

by Inside Climate News | January 29, 2025
Instead, it has stalled the growth of Maryland’s renewable energy sector, undermined the transition to fossil-free electricity and funneled billions in public subsidies to out-of-state energy producers with significant consequences for the environment and ratepayers, according to the ...

‘Paranoia and distrust’: How Trump’s mass firing of government watchdogs will affect climate policy

by Grist | January 29, 2025
“All of the checks and balances have been stripped,” said Kyla Bennett, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a group that offers pro bono assistance to whistleblowers within federal agencies. Federal employees, she added, “can’t ...

Lawsuit Challenges Trump Administration’s Effort To Wipe Out Civil Service Protections

by National Parks Traveler | January 28, 2025
President Trump’s move to eliminate civil service protections for a wide number of federal employees was challenged in federal court Tuesday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which maintained the effort exceeds the president’s authority. Under the president ...

Get ready for a dizzying debate on energy policy

by Maryland Matters | January 27, 2025
A study released last week from a national government watchdog group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, suggested that design flaws in the RPS “are undermining the state’s transition to clean electricity and imposing significant costs on Maryland ratepayers.” ...

Trump administration targets wide range of positions for removing federal job protections

by Federal News Network | January 27, 2025
Critics of the Trump administration’s efforts, though, said the executive order is an attempt to politicize the career federal workforce. Many have said it will ultimately harm the non-partisan nature of agencies and threaten national security. “These moves are designed to weaken the ...

Sewage fertilizer poses health risks, EPA warns. What does that mean for North Texas?

by Fort Worth Report | January 27, 2025
Watchdog nonprofit organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility assisted Ames’s office with the testing and analysis of Synagro’s fertilizer. On behalf of the affected farmers in Johnson County, the nonprofit filed a civil lawsuit against the EPA, alleging the agency ...

Weaker cleanup standards feared

by Simi Valley Acorn | January 25, 2025
Environmental and public health advocacy groups, including Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Parents Against SSFL, Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles Chapter, and the Committee to Bridge the Gap, condemned DOE’s proposed changes. They argue that weaker ...

Trump boosts political control over top-tier federal workers

by E&E News | January 24, 2025
Likewise, Peter Jenkins, senior counsel at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, called Trump’s move “mean-spirited” and a “power grab” by the president that “will be counter-productive for the effectiveness of the nation’s top career civil servants.” Jenkins ...

Trump puts industry insiders in charge of overseeing chemical safety

by The Washington Post | January 23, 2025
Beck will be joined by Dekleva, who also previously worked for the American Chemistry Council and DuPont and will serve as the deputy assistant administrator. Dekleva did not respond to a request for comment. Kyla Bennett, the director of science policy at Public Employees for ...

Trump declared a “national energy emergency.” Experts say it’s a “farce”

by Salon | January 22, 2025
Dr. Kyla Bennett, the director of science policy for the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), told Salon that there is an inextricable link between the science of climate change and the economics of rising prices. “Higher temperatures, floods and droughts — all ...
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