President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that his Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin will cut a majority of that agency’s workforce.
‘I spoke to Lee Zeldin and he thinks he’s going to be cutting 65 or so percent of the people from environmental and we’re going to speed up the process too,’ Trump said at his first Cabinet meeting.
‘A lot of people that weren’t doing their job, were just obstructionists, a lot of people that didn’t exist,’ he added.
Trump, along with his head of DOGE Elon Musk, has been on a kick to cut the federal workforce and reshape the role of government.
Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, was at Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting and Trump has praised him for his efforts and encouraged him to take it even further.
The EPA employs around 17,000 people, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Its budget is $12.083 billion.