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Q&A: The whistleblowing business is booming

by E&E News | August 7, 2025
“Whistleblowing has traditionally been a nonpartisan thing,” said Tim Whitehouse, who joined PEER as its executive director in 2019, following stints leading Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility and a decade at EPA. But under Trump 2.0, PEER has seen a “20-fold increase ...

Environmental Protection Agency begins Office of Research and Development closure

by The Daily Texan | July 31, 2025
Kyla Bennett, the director of science policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, expressed similar frustrations with the office’s closure. “There’s no reason to reorganize and (reduce the workforce in the) ORD,” Bennett said. “It provides us with so much ...

Top Democrats slam HUD flood management plans

by E&E News | July 31, 2025
According to records collected by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, HUD submitted the rule in early July, and then yanked it just days later. In their letter, the senators said that “the status of the interim rule is unclear.” Read the PEER Story… ...

Forest Service Faces Identity Crisis in USDA Overhaul Plan. Again.

by Mountain Journal | July 30, 2025
A 2021 survey of BLM workers by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility reported that 87 percent of reassigned employees either retired or quit rather than move. The field offices were staffed largely by new hires who lacked the scientific or experiential backgrounds of the ...

Why Farmers May Be Able to Continue Fertilizing Fields With PFAS-Contaminated Sewage Sludge

by Inside Climate News | July 28, 2025
Public health advocates and some Congress members are now mobilizing to kill the rider, which they say is likely illegal because it pre-empts the Clean Water Act. The attempt to kill the risk assessment is “absolutely insane,” said Kyla Bennett, a former EPA attorney who is now science ...

‘It’s about choices’: Debate in Massachusetts over PFAS in artificial turf fields

by Worcester Telegram & Gazette | July 26, 2025
Bennett’s view of PFAS doesn’t align with Taylor’s testimony. Manufacturers continue putting PFAS in their turf fields, said Bennett, adding that academics and nonprofits have tested dozens of artificial turf samples and all of them contained PFAS. Bennett hasn’t ...

EPA Shutting Down Independent Research

by Living On Earth | July 25, 2025
The US Environmental Protection Agency is shutting down its Office of Research and Development, which represents 50 years of independent scientific research. Kyla Bennett is director of science policy for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, and she joined host Aynsley O’ ...

EPA on track to lay off 271 environmental justice staffers

by E&E News | July 24, 2025
With the initial shock now passed, affected employees are considering their options, PEER staff counsel Laura Dumais said. “I think everybody’s just trying to move forward; it’s so unfortunate what’s happening,” Dumais said. A religious denomination that played a pivotal role in ...

EPA is closing its research and development office as part of a major agency cut-down

by KPAX | July 21, 2025
“EPA deals with climate change issues in virtually everything that they do,” says Kyla Bennett, the director of science policy for the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. The EPA’s research and development office houses work like the Air, Climate ...

Trump administration shuts down EPA’s scientific research arm

by NPR | July 20, 2025
Kyla Bennett, director of science policy for the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), said eliminating the ORD “will not only cripple EPA’s ability to do its own research, but also to apply the research of other scientists. This [reduction in ...

EPA eliminates its scientific research arm

by The Washington Post | July 18, 2025
Staffers from the division were notified about the RIF through the public press release, said Kyla Bennett, director of science policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Staff were then notified about an all-staff meeting scheduled for Monday. Bennett said the manner in ...

Honolulu Worker Paid Not To Work For Nearly Five Years

by Honolulu Civil beat | July 15, 2025
Kaaa-Swain’s case was the most egregious example identified in Civil Beat’s review of public records, and it is extreme even by national standards. Peter Jenkins, a Maryland-based attorney who has pushed for shorter periods of paid leave for federal employees, said he’s never seen ...

House GOP Wants to Stop a Ban That Would Keep Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ Off Food Crops

by Common Dreams | July 15, 2025
The provision, introduced as part of a government spending bill unveiled Monday, would bar the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from enforcing the findings from a January risk assessment, which found that the sludge contains dangerous amounts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances ( ...

Trump administration yanks $15m in research into PFAS on US farms: ‘not just stupid, it’s evil’

by The Guardian | July 11, 2025
The administration’s move is “not just stupid, it’s evil”, said Kyla Bennett, science director with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), and a former EPA attorney. “Cutting funding into research on how these toxic chemicals get into our food will doom us to ...

High case numbers could snarl federal employees who appeal their removals

by Government Executive | July 8, 2025
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit group that defends governmental whistleblowers, warned that the case number could surge if a court order blocking widespread agency layoffs is lifted. “MSPB may be heading for the biggest legal trainwreck in history,” said ...

Interior implements Trump’s essay requirement in federal hiring

by E&E News | July 8, 2025
OPM quickly backpedaled on the essay requirement in the wake of a formal complaint by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, saying it would retain the essay questions in the new hiring process but downgrade their importance. Read the PEER Story… ...

UPDATE | Supreme Court Decision Could Spur “Gutting” Of National Park Service

by National Parks Traveler | July 8, 2025
Fears that a RIF was imminent spiked after the Supreme Court declined to take up whether President Donald Trump could move forward with a RIF without Congressional approval and sent the matter back down to federal court for adjudication. For more than a month the National Parks ...

Roughly 140 EPA staffers who signed ‘dissent’ letter are put on leave

by The Washington Post | July 3, 2025
Tim Whitehouse, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which has previously represented EPA and other federal employees, said that federal employees have First Amendment rights, which should protect speech that doesn’t harm the agencies they work for ...

E.P.A. Suspends 144 Employees After They Signed a Letter Criticizing Trump

by New York Times | July 3, 2025
Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit group that defends the rights of civil servants, said the Constitution generally protects the speech of federal workers. “We believe strongly that these federal employees have First ...

EPA to launch program that lets people adopt its lab animals amid Trump cuts

by The Guardian | July 3, 2025
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer) nonprofit obtained and revealed an EPA document announcing the adoption program. The document announced adoptions for zebrafish and rats from an EPA lab in North Carolina. It states: “Adopt love. Save a life. Our adoption program ...
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