Terry Gross

She's also the author of the bestseller, The Sixth Extinction.

Our interview was recorded yesterday.

Elizabeth Colbert, welcome back to Fresh Air.

You start your piece in The New Yorker about Zeldin by saying that last summer, more than 150 staff members of the EPA sent a letter to Zeldin about their concerns about his leadership.

What were their concerns?

So the response that they got to that letter was most of them were terminated or put on leave.

Zeldin's response to this letter was to say, we have a zero tolerance policy for agency bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging and undercutting the agenda of this administration.

The will of the American public will not be ignored.

Is it the job of the EPA to carry out the Trump administration's agenda?

There's a move you describe as a breathtaking assault on the Office of Research and Development, also known as the ORD.

So explain what this office does and why it's very important.

So the Office of Research and Development employed about 1,500 people.

What were they told about their future?

And what happened to that department?

Does it exist anymore?

You write that the most significant climate change rollback at the EPA under Zeldin has been the rollback of the endangerment finding.

What is that?

He went against the previous EPA heads and decided to try to wipe out this endangerment finding.

And this was a big subject of a debate, an argument, I should say, that ran like around 10 minutes about what the Clean Air Act actually says.

And it was an argument between Zeldin, who was testifying before the House Appropriations Committee, and Rosa Deloria, a Democrat from Connecticut, a member of Congress, who is the ranking member of the committee.