"Staff expressed frustration with how the transfers are being handled and perceive them as yet another measure to traumatize the workforce."

"The Trump administration is tightening its grip over EPA’s scientific enterprise as it prepares to relocate employees from its once esteemed research arm.

The agency’s new, smaller science office has laid out its policies on how EPA will approve new research and publish its work for the public, according to internal memos obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News. Further, EPA’s remaining scientists from the now-dissolved Office of Research and Development received reassignments earlier this week, including many who will have to move if they want to continue working at the agency.

The agency’s nonstop swirl of change has suffocated agency scientists, said Chris Frey, who led EPA’s research office during the Biden administration. “The deck is stacked against scientists who want to do good-faith science,” Frey said.

Darya Minovi, a manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy, said, “We’ve seen the Trump administration be very clear that they’re unwilling to regulate pollutants.”"

Kevin Bogardus and Ellie Borst report for E&E News April 9, 2026. [2]