In 2017, when Donald Trump took office for the first time, a group of retired Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) workers — from office staffers to agency heads — formed the Environmental Protection Network to support the essential work of the agency they loved that was then being threatened. The group began as an all-volunteer effort. In 2025, the network is now a nonprofit with two dozen staff, as a second Trump administration, led by Trump’s EPA administrator Lee Zeldin is actively working to dismantle the agency.
The number of volunteer members of the network — who lend their expertise to government agencies across the board — has now surpassed 700, including about 50 staffers who were fired or resigned over the past several months.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Michelle Roos, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, who talks about the group’s origins and their current work to defend government regulations essential to protect human health and the environment.
MICHELLE ROOS: So basically, in the wake of Trump being elected the first time, a bunch of folks — predominantly very recent retirees from EPA, but also political appointees that served under both Democratic and Republican administrations over the previous 20 years — got together in a living room in Washington, D.C. and said, what if this new Trump administration follows through on its various campaign promises?
What if it pulls back from international climate change negotiations? What if it eviscerates EPA? What if it cuts its budget? What if it shuts down offices, doesn’t follow science, etc.? We should be prepared. And so what was a handful of meetings in different living rooms and very informal, it became very clear that the Environmental Protection Agency couldn’t really speak for itself any longer.
And so suddenly, this group of people was an independent source of information and resources and enthusiasm for the mission and the importance of the Environmental Protection Agency’s work. So in that spring, that March, they did a deep dive into the president’s proposed budget, wrote a comprehensive 40-some-odd page paper and talked a tremendous amount to reporters and congressional staffers to explain why this was a bad idea. And after that, they’re like, wait, hold on a second. We are very useful. And they began the process of becoming a formal 501(c)(3) organization.
MELINDA TUHUS: Michelle Roos, in 2009, the Supreme Court ruled that EPA has the authority and the responsibility to regulate greenhouse gases in order to protect public health. That was called the endangerment finding. And now, the Trump administration is trying to overturn that finding, which of course would have devastating impacts on public health. So, is the Environmental Protection Network involved in trying to keep that from happening?
MICHELLE ROOS: One of the things that we’re doing is just making sure that people understand the severity of this. This repeal of the endangerment finding will lead to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths, increased asthma attacks, missed work days and school days from illness inspired by air pollution. It is devastating. It is something that we’re not going to feel 30 years from now. This is something we’re going to feel now. I don’t know where you live, but I live next to a highway. I’m breathing in emissions all the time from cars and it is indisputable science and fact that reducing those emissions leads to better health outcomes for all of us, particularly children, elderly and people with existing health issues. And so I think the big thing that we’re doing is just making it very clear to folks across the country why this is so devastating and why the endangerment finding was so important.
The second thing we’re doing is we are still participating in the formal regulatory process and public comment process that agencies are currently following, which means that we showed up both formally as EPN, but many of our volunteers also spoke for themselves. We testified in a recent public hearing about the importance of this. And we are submitting comprehensive formal comments on this that we will be submitting to EPA before the end of the month. I believe the deadline’s around Sept. 22.
So we are still participating in this process as an organization, as an NGO, but more importantly than all that, as folks that helped write the regulations that met the endangerment finding requirements. It’s truly devastating. And I don’t really understand how elected officials get away with doing things that are particularly devastating to their constituents. And I think a big part of this is we are all exposed to just a tiny sliver of information that is sadly structured in a way and delivered to us in a way through algorithms and other things to support what we already think versus revealing the facts. As an organization that believes in the law, science, facts, transparency, we got our work cut out for us.
For more information, visit the Environmental Protection Network’s website at environmentalprotectionnetwork.org.
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