US EPA plans to cut staff to 1980s levels, dissolve research office

https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/us-epa-plans-reduce-staff-1980s-levels-cut-budget-by-300-million-2025-05-02/

36•geox•9mo ago

Comments

barbazoo•9mo ago

> In 1984, the EPA had just over 11,400 staff members compared to more than 15,100 in 2024.

tedunangst•9mo ago

Looking forward to rediscovering if acid rain is real or a myth.

Daishiman•9mo ago

American quality of life is going to decline so precipitously with the loss of state capacity for basic regulation and most people won't even understand what hit them.

toomuchtodo•9mo ago

People who can leave will, people who can’t are hosed. Better luck in 4 years after another ~8-10M voters have aged out (~5k-7k/day).

meristohm•9mo ago

If only we had the collective right of recall, like the Haudenosaunee government that the US is in part based on, rather than having to wait years.

Edit: "if only", ha. If only it were that simple.

billy99k•9mo ago

is collective recall the new buzz word for anti-democracy?

toomuchtodo•9mo ago

Nothing wrong with being anti democracy. Peter Thiel said "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” and I find it hard to disagree with him at this point. The average American is at a 7th-8th grade reading level, for example. Not much pride in being dragged by that quality of electorate.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/14/politics/the-biggest-predicto...

squigz•9mo ago

One has to wonder whether the billionaire might have other motives for being anti-democracy than a fervent belief in 'freedom'

toomuchtodo•9mo ago

Oh, no, of course. We can both agree democracy is a failure for different reasons.

squigz•9mo ago

Why do you think democracy is a failure? And what systems do you think should replace it?

toomuchtodo•9mo ago

Recent examples:

https://19thnews.org/2025/05/missouri-abortion-rights-laws-p...

https://moritzlaw.osu.edu/unchecked-power-ohio-general-assem...

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/a...

squigz•9mo ago

I don't see how that demonstrates that democracy is a failure. Maybe it demonstrates that democracy in America is a failure, but that's a stretch too IMO.

Anyway, what systems do you think would be better? Specifically curious how they'd be immune to the issues outlined in those links.

hn_acker•9mo ago

How is collective recall anti-democracy?

emchammer•9mo ago

I fear that the administration will drag much of the world into this kicking and screaming.

Cook New Emojis

Show HN: LoKey Typer – A calm typing practice app with ambient soundscapes

Long-Sought Proof Tames Some of Math's Unruliest Equations

Hacking the last Z80 computer – FOSDEM 2026 [video]

Browser-use for Node.js v0.2.0: TS AI browser automation parity with PY v0.5.11

Michael Pollan Says Humanity Is About to Undergo a Revolutionary Change

Software Engineering Is Back

Storyship: Turn Screen Recordings into Professional Demos

Reputation Scores for GitHub Accounts

A BSOD for All Seasons – Send Bad News via a Kernel Panic

Show HN: I got tired of copy-pasting between Claude windows, so I built Orcha

Omarchy First Impressions

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

Show HN: Versor – The "Unbending" Paradigm for Geometric Deep Learning

Show HN: HypothesisHub – An open API where AI agents collaborate on medical res

Big Tech vs. OpenClaw

Anofox Forecast

Ask HN: How do you figure out where data lives across 100 microservices?

Motus: A Unified Latent Action World Model

Rotten Tomatoes Desperately Claims 'Impossible' Rating for 'Melania' Is Real

The protein denitrosylase SCoR2 regulates lipogenesis and fat storage [pdf]

Los Alamos Primer

NewASM Virtual Machine

Terminal-Bench 2.0 Leaderboard

I vibe coded a BBS bank with a real working ledger

The Path to Mojo 1.0

Show HN: I'm 75, building an OSS Virtual Protest Protocol for digital activism

Show HN: I built Divvy to split restaurant bills from a photo

Hot Reloading in Rust? Subsecond and Dioxus to the Rescue

Skim – vibe review your PRs

Cook New Emojis

Show HN: LoKey Typer – A calm typing practice app with ambient soundscapes

Long-Sought Proof Tames Some of Math's Unruliest Equations

Hacking the last Z80 computer – FOSDEM 2026 [video]

Browser-use for Node.js v0.2.0: TS AI browser automation parity with PY v0.5.11

Michael Pollan Says Humanity Is About to Undergo a Revolutionary Change

Software Engineering Is Back

Storyship: Turn Screen Recordings into Professional Demos

Reputation Scores for GitHub Accounts

A BSOD for All Seasons – Send Bad News via a Kernel Panic

Show HN: I got tired of copy-pasting between Claude windows, so I built Orcha

Omarchy First Impressions

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

Show HN: Versor – The "Unbending" Paradigm for Geometric Deep Learning

Show HN: HypothesisHub – An open API where AI agents collaborate on medical res

Big Tech vs. OpenClaw

Anofox Forecast

Ask HN: How do you figure out where data lives across 100 microservices?

Motus: A Unified Latent Action World Model

Rotten Tomatoes Desperately Claims 'Impossible' Rating for 'Melania' Is Real

The protein denitrosylase SCoR2 regulates lipogenesis and fat storage [pdf]

Los Alamos Primer

NewASM Virtual Machine

Terminal-Bench 2.0 Leaderboard

I vibe coded a BBS bank with a real working ledger

The Path to Mojo 1.0

Show HN: I'm 75, building an OSS Virtual Protest Protocol for digital activism

Show HN: I built Divvy to split restaurant bills from a photo

Hot Reloading in Rust? Subsecond and Dioxus to the Rescue

Skim – vibe review your PRs

US EPA plans to cut staff to 1980s levels, dissolve research office

Comments