The Great Battlefield The State of the EPA Under Trump with Michelle Roos of EPN
Mar 4, 2026
Michelle Roos, Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Network and former EPA official who organizes former staff to defend science-based protection. She discusses the dismantling of the EPA under Trump, aggressive ideological purges and mass firings, and how EPN preserves data, advises policy, and prepares to rebuild scientific capacity and public-health protections.
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Translating Budget Cuts Into Health Consequences
- EPN's founding members focused on translating technical budget impacts into public-health implications to spur congressional and public response.
- Roos recounts they deep-dived the proposed 30% EPA budget cut to show real-world health consequences.
EPN Began As A Living Room Resistance Group
- EPN formed after Trump 2016 as a living-room group of former EPA Republican and Democratic appointees and career staff.
- They produced 'Resetting the Course of EPA' with 17 papers and 150 alum contributing action plans for rebuilding.
Volunteers Supported EPA During Biden Implementation
- During the Biden years many EPN volunteers returned temporarily to help rulemaking and implementation.
- Roos says volunteers added value by commenting on proposed rules and filling expertise gaps while baby-boomer career staff retired.