The first thing Amanda Cronin did when her supervisor offered her a job at the Environmental Protection Agency was buy herself a big piece of chocolate cake. The 25-year old New York native had spent nine months searching for work in environmental advocacy with little luck, until she stumbled upon a posting for a program analyst in the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, or OEJECR, based in Washington, D.C. When she joined in May 2023, the Biden Administration was in the midst of a historic push to advance environmental justice nationwide, and the office was buzzing with the energy of a start-up company.
“I just felt like I was part of something big and special,” Cronin recalled.
She quickly plunged into the world of environmental justice work, helping to coordinate the EPA’s partnerships with tribes and local advocacy groups, and organizing webinars to inform residents from Arizona to Alabama about federal grants they could apply for to fight the pollution in their backyards. Last November, when Donald Trump won the presidential election on a platform that promised to gut environmental regulation in the nation’s industrial corridors, Cronin knew her days in the agency could be numbered.
Sure enough, on February 6, she and 167 other workers in the office were placed on indefinite leave, and locked out of their federal email accounts. A week later, an additional 388 staffers still in the first year of their positions in the agency were terminated.
While on leave, Cronin filled her time with scuba diving and yoga classes and “trying to maintain a healthy balance of staying informed while also not falling into the doom scroll spiral.”
Last Tuesday, Cronin got some more bad news: The EPA would begin eliminating all environmental justice offices and positions immediately, including jobs in OEJECR and in the environmental justice offices within the EPA’s 10 regional divisions. In an internal memo, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the move was intended to move the agency into compliance with President Trump’s January 20 executive order titled “Ending Radical and Wastef
