During his cabinet meeting on Wednesday, President Trump casually mentioned that Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, intended to fire 65 percent of employees, an incision so deep that officials said it would hobble the E.P.A.
Mr. Trump said Mr. Zeldin “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, at the same time.”
Within minutes, managers at the agency said they received a White House memo telling them to prepare for mass layoffs.
The memo, which was sent to leaders of multiple agencies, said that the federal government “is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt.” It did not mention the 65 percent goal, but laid out steps for the E.P.A. to prepare for what is known as a reduction in force, which would result in eliminating 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.
The E.P.A. had 15,123 full-time employees at the end of December, according to the latest budget. A reduction of 65 percent would mean the loss of nearly 10,000 jobs, which would devastate the agency responsible for clean air and clean water, said Marie Owens Powell, the president of the agency’s biggest union, the American Federation of Government Employees.
Ms. Owens Powell said the administration had not informed the union about its 65 percent goal and that she had heard about it first from Mr. Trump on television.
“This is so much bigger than just 65 percent of the employees,” she said. “What does it really mean? It means 65 percent less people available to respond to natural disasters, which are happening more frequently, not less. It would mean 65 percent less people to respond to hazardous cleanups, to do air monitoring and lead abatement.”
Nicole Cantello, president of federation’s Local 704, which represents employees in the Midwest, said the result was that “polluters would have a holiday.”
Trump administration officials “really have no idea what we do, and they don’t want to see us as people who are protecting human health and the environment, and doing good,” she said. “They just want to attack us as faceless bureaucrats.”
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the leading Democrat on the committee that oversees the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement that Mr. Zeldin was repeatedly asked at his confirmation hearing whether he supported mass layoffs.
“Each time, he responded that he looked forward to working collaboratively with E.P.A.’s dedicated staff,” Mr. Whitehouse said. “It is now clear that the fix was in from the very beginning, to help the looters and polluters who bankrolled President Trump’s campaign.”
The fossil fuel industry, which includes petrochemical manufacturers, donated heavily to Mr. Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to remove regulations that add to their costs. He has populated the senior ranks at the E.P.A. with people who have served as lawyers and lobbyists for the oil and chemical industries, many of whom worked in his first administration to weaken climate and pollution protections.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Zeldin have repeatedly said they intend to ensure the country has clean air and water. Mr. Whitehouse said that “cannot mask the cruel reality that those goals fail if E.P.A. is disabled.”
In the past weeks, the Trump administration has fired 388 probationary employees at the agency and put 168 others on administrative leave, most of whom work on protecting poor and minority communities that face disproportionate levels of pollution.
During his first term Mr. Trump promised to eliminate the E.P.A. “in almost every form,” leaving “only tidbits” intact at the agency responsible for protecting the air and water from pollution, toxic chemicals and climate change.
The agency saw severe cuts to both its budget and staffing during those years, but it began rebuilding during the Biden administration. It was budgeted to have about 17,000 full-time employees this year, roughly the staffing levels last seen during the Obama administration.
Myron Ebell, a longtime critic of the E.P.A. who led the agency transition team during Mr. Trump’s first term, said a 65 percent cut was a start. He said the E.P.A. had largely fulfilled its mission and could be downgraded to an agency that monitors and assists state environmental agencies.
“It could be an awful lot smaller,” said Mr. Ebell, who does not accept the overwhelming scientific consensus that the planet is warming because of human activity.
The White House memo was issued by Russell T. Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, along with Charles Ezell, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management. It said that voters “registered their verdict on the bloated, corrupt federal bureaucracy” in the November election.
“Tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups, while hurting hard-working American citizens,” it said. The memo directs agency heads to develop “agency reorganization plans” by March 13 and said those plans should seek to achieve “a significant reduction” in the number of full time employees as well as “a reduced real property footprint.”
The E.P.A. was created by President Richard M. Nixon in 1970, the year after the Cuyahoga River in Ohio became so polluted that it caught fire and shocked the nation. The fire helped galvanize a national environmental movement and Congress passed a series of major laws, including the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.
Under the Biden administration, the E.P.A. became a focal point for another environmental crisis, climate change. The agency moved to limit the greenhouse gases from automobiles and power plants that scientists say are dangerously heating the planet.
