EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the plan in a memo. The work slated for elimination had aimed to ease the pollution that affects poor and minority communities. Also: older Black people in America die at higher rates; the Education Department slashes half its staff; and more.
The Trump administration intends to eliminate Environmental Protection Agency offices responsible for addressing the disproportionately high levels of pollution facing poor communities, according to a memo from Lee Zeldin, the agency administrator.
Mr. Zeldin’s move effectively ends three decades of work at the E.P.A. to try to ease the pollution that burdens poor and minority communities, which are frequently located near highways, power plants, industrial plants and other polluting facilities. Studies have shown that people who live in those communities have higher rates of asthma, heart disease and other health problems, compared with the national average. (Friedman, 3/11)
In related news —
For older Black people in America, the golden years often come with a harsh reality: They are more likely to suffer from chronic illnesses, be sicker in old age, and die younger than their white counterparts. (Goodwin, 3/11)
More news from the Trump administration —
The Education Department said Tuesday that it is cutting its staff by about half, a major step toward President Donald Trump’s goal of shrinking the federal role in education and one that critics denounced as damaging to American children.
Trump has said he wants to eliminate the department altogether, but that is unlikely because it would require an act of Congress and 60 yes votes in the Senate, where Republicans hold only 53 seats. Absent that, the administration has been working to gut the agency by cutting grants and contracts and reducing staff. (Meckler and Douglas-Gabriel, 3/11)
Dozens of former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees sent a letter to agency leaders on Monday asking to be reinstated, citing shifting guidance from the government office that triggered their layoffs. (Cueto, 3/11)
The new administration’s decision to fire a tenth of the workers at the federal government agency that oversees mental and behavioral health will imperil efforts to curb suicides and drug overdose deaths, according to current and former employees. (Broderick, 3/12)
The Trump administration has shut down a unit of the Department of Veterans Affairs created under President Joe Biden to address disparities in how the federal government provides disability compensation to military service members.
The closure of the Veterans Benefits Administration’s Office of Equity Assurance effectively hobbles internal efforts at the VA to investigate and eliminate long-standing racial inequities the department itself has acknowledged. (Coleman, 3/11)
In the wake of federal firings and executive orders, providers and patients at the Department of Veterans Affairs say mental health and mental health care are suffering. They fear this struggle will get worse as the VA carries through with 80,000 promised job cuts. The agency is one of the largest providers of mental health care in the country. (Riddle, 3/12)
Also —
Uma Reddy was sitting at her kitchen table Monday night, wrapping up patient notes, when the notice finally came: The $16.6 million grant she had used to build a maternal health center at Columbia University had been terminated. (Mast, 3/11)
The Trump administration has terminated $800 million in grants to Johns Hopkins University, spurring the nation’s top spender on research and development to plan layoffs and cancel health projects, from breast-feeding support efforts in Baltimore to mosquito-net programs in Mozambique.
The cuts, which are in addition to threatened trims to National Institutes of Health grants, are related to the university’s work with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The school is preparing to shrink its Baltimore-based affiliated nonprofit, JHPIEGO, that since the 1970s has worked closely with the USAID and has already stopped work on a number of international health projects. (Essley Whyte, 3/11)
