Even Before Shutdown, Environmental Protection Agency Being Gutted By The Hundreds

As documented through Smart Dissent's Environment section, OUR EPA is being gutted.  At first, the endless corruption of Scott Pruitt made headlines, potentially slowing down the destruction or at least giving it some attention.  However, now the EPA is almost entirely out of the headlines while Andrew Wheeler guts environmental protections that save lives and our planet.  

The gutting of the EPA is not just the regulations themselves; it's the people who are pushed out which will set us back in ways we cannot imagine.

His ethics issues aside, Pruitt fulfilled the mission the president appointed him to execute.

Over the past two years, the EPA staff shrank 6 percent, according to a Post analysis of federal data. As a result, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the agency is down 245 scientists, 116 engineers and 237 environmental protection specialists.

This certainly doesn't make the headlines ever while the heinous rollbacks sometimes do. The decline in staffing is certainly felt among career employees there.

Pruitt once assured Trump that he had cut the agency’s size to Reagan-era levels and was returning its focus to its “core mission,” as opposed to climate change. Scaling back what he called the previous administration’s regulatory excesses, Pruitt worked to reverse several Obama-era policies aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, loosening carbon limits on power plants and suspending tighter emissions standards for certain diesel-powered trucks.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/scott-pruitt-epa-expenses/