DULUTH — Alexander Cole wasn’t surprised when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fired him by email Friday afternoon.

The 29-year-old Superior resident was among the six employees at the EPA’s Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division Laboratory in Duluth placed on leave July 3 for signing a “Declaration of Dissent” criticizing the Trump administration’s politicization of the agency.

The leave period was initially supposed to be two weeks long so EPA could investigate the employees, but the agency kept extending it until it reached nearly two months.

Shortly after 3 p.m. Friday, Aug. 29, Travis Voyles, the EPA’s associate deputy administrator, sent Cole, who had worked as a biologist at the lab since July 2024, an email informing him his employment would end later that day and

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