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DOJ’s Environmental Enforcement Arm Has Been Captured by Industry, Critics Say
['Dana Drugmand', 'Mike Ludwig', 'Dan Ross', 'Sasha Abramsky', 'Sharon Zhang', 'Jake Johnson', 'C.J. Polychroniou', 'Katheryn Houghton', 'Austin C. Mccoy', 'Liza Gross']
Truthout
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment.
The demise of environmental enforcement under the second Trump administration, Mariani said, is unprecedented.
The Environmental Enforcement Section has indeed shrunken dramatically.
Buyouts, threatened layoffs, budget cuts, and transfers have already eliminated half of DOJ’s Environmental Enforcement Section,” PEER wrote in its January 2026 analysis.
Laura Thoms, director of enforcement at Earthjustice who previously served for 19 years as an attorney at DOJ’s Environmental Enforcement Section, said in a December 2025 blog post that environmental laws are meaningless without enforcement.