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

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency was already reeling from massive staff 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 a skeletal staff and limited 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 under President Bill Clinton, said it's natural to worry that a shutdown will lead "the worst polluters" to treat it as a chance to dump toxic pollution without getting caught.

"Nobody will be holding polluters account