EPA's job is to protect America's air, water and land. Here's how a shutdown affects that effort

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FILE - The Kyger Creek Power Plant, a coal-fired power plant, operates April 14, 2025, near Cheshire, Ohio. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel, File)

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency was already reeling from massive stuff cuts and dramatic shifts in priority and policy. A government shutdown raises new questions about how it can carry out its founding mission of protecting America's health and environment with little more than skeletal staff and funding.

In President Donald Trump's second term, the EPA has leaned hard into an agenda of deregulation and facilitating Trump's boosting of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal to meet what he has called an energy emergency.

Jeremy Symons, a former EPA policy official u