Agency shakeups: In the first Cabinet meeting of the new administration, President Donald Trump announced that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Lee Zeldin will be cutting 65 percent of his agency's workforce, or almost 10,000 jobs. "Hours later, an E.P.A. official said Mr. Trump was referring to overall agency budget cuts and not a 65 percent reduction in personnel," reports The New York Times. Trump and co. should get their stories straight and be consistent, but a massive headcount reduction at the agency will probably be necessary regardless.
"After recently identifying $20 billion fraudulent in spending, Administrator Zeldin is committed to eliminating 65% of the EPA's wasteful spending," says White House spokesman Taylor Rogers. "The $20 billion Rogers referred to is the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, for which the Biden administration placed $20 billion in grants to be administered by nonprofit groups in Citibank," adds Politico. "EPA has not identified any fraud under the program but is trying to get the money back from Citibank."
The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund has become something of a controversy (though calling it "fraudulent" is probably not accurate). The massive grant, doled out as former President Joe Biden was winding down his time in office, was supposed to fund clean energy and transportation projects in poorer communities. That $20 billion cited is a chunk of the slightly larger $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). (You might be wondering, "What does this have to do with reducing inflation?" Absolutely nothing, of course. Thanks, Biden. In that sense, all unrelated things authorized by the IRA are fraudulent, I suppose, deliberately branded as something they're not.)
