On Monday, some employees at ORD, the largest office in the agency, began receiving emails saying they’d been assigned new positions within the EPA. “There is no action you need to take to accept the reassignment,

Justin Chen, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, the union representing 8,000 EPA workers nationwide, said the organizational structure of ORD put barriers between the agency’s researchers and the agency’s political decision-making, enforcement and regulatory teams—even though they all used ORD’s work.

The research and development office had been in the crosshairs of organizations allied with President Donald Trump.