President Donald Trump’s administration is firing or reassigning over 450 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency as part of a larger push to eliminate “environmental justice” programs.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the employee moves on Monday, saying 280 staffers were being fired, and 175 others would be reassigned. The cut roles were in the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, the Office of Inclusive Excellence, and EPA regional offices.
“EPA is taking the next step to terminate the Biden-Harris Administration’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Environmental Justice arms of the agency,” a spokesperson told Axios.
Zeldin explained at a Monday press conference that tax dollars put toward environmental justice issues were widely misspent.
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“The problem is that, in the name of environmental justice, a dollar will get secured and not get spent on remediating that environmental issue,” he said.
The firings come the same week that Zeldin launched talks with Mexico about eliminating sewage contamination that flows over the border from Tijuana to pollute California’s coastlines.
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Zeldin visited San Diego to discuss the issue on Tuesday, noting that one of the affected areas is the training grounds for Navy SEALs.
“The Americans on our side of the border who have been dealing with this… for decades, are out of patience,” Zeldin said Tuesday. “There’s no way that we are going to stand before the people of California and ask them to have more patience and just bear with all of us as we go through the next 10 or 20 or 30 years of being stuck in 12 feet of raw sewage and not getting anywhere.”
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“So we are all out of patience,” he continued. “There’s a very limited opportunity. We’re in good faith, both on the American side and also on the Mexican side, what’s being communicated by the new Mexican president is an intense desire to fully resolve this situation.”
Zeldin said that he met with Mexican officials for about 90 minutes Monday night to discuss the sewage spewing into U.S. waters — and relayed that the Mexican environmental secretary wants to have a “strong collaborative relationship” with the U.S. to end the pollution.
“I will be speaking with the chief of staff to the Mexican environmental secretary to ensure that over the course of the coming days, over the course of the next couple weeks, that we are able to put together a specific statement from both countries on a mutual understanding of what Mexico is going to do to help resolve this issue,” he said.
Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report.