DULUTH, Minn. — Alexander Cole wasn’t surprised when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fired him by email Friday afternoon.
The 29-year-old Superior, Wis., 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, 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 instructing him to return EPA property by mail.
“I have determined that your continued employment is not in the public interest,” Voyles wrote in the letter reviewed by the Duluth News Tribune. “For this reason, you are being removed from your position with the Agency and the federal civil service effective 5:00 p.m. EST, August 29, 2025.”
According to Cole, he and another probationary employee were fired Friday, while the other four Duluth employees placed on leave received either a one-week extension of leave or a “notice of proposed removal” to tenured EPA staff, essentially the first step in the termination process that allows the employee the opportunity to respond before a final decision is made.
“I have no regrets about signing that letter, and I would sign it again,” Cole said in an interview with the News Tribune on Tuesday.
He said he signed it because the letter called out EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and the Trump administration for leading an agency that no longer uses scientific findings to create or revoke regulations, which is “putting American health in danger,” Cole said.
“When I became a federal employee, or federal servant, I took an oath of office, and it was to uphold the Constitution and to uphold the EPA mission statement, which is to protect human health and the environment,” Cole said, echoing a social media post he made Saturday that quickly spread. “I’ve taken those oaths seriously, and have done so using the best science available.”
The move comes just weeks after the EPA said it would no longer recognize its labor unions and terminated all collective bargaining agreements.
“Without the union contract in place at EPA, EPA scientists are left without a defender in the workplace who could take on EPA’s attempts to fire staff for exercising their whistleblower or first amendment rights,“ Nicole Cantello, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704, which represents some 1,000 EPA employees in the Midwest, said in an emailed statement Tuesday.
The notice of termination includes ways in which employees can appeal the firing, something Cole said he planned to do.
“I would like to return, even if it’s during this (Trump) administration,” said Cole, who earned his bachelor’s degree from the College of St. Scholastica and his doctorate in environmental science from Baylor University in Texas.
Cole said the investigation consisted of an emailed survey that asked where his EPA laptop was and “yes” or “no” questions on whether he viewed or signed the letter on agency time or equipment. Cole said he did not sign the letter using agency resources and did not view the letter on agency resources “to the best of my recollection.”
It’s unclear how many of the approximately 140 on leave have been fired. The EPA did not answer a question on how many were fired, but other news outlets have reported that approximately eight received termination notices Friday.
In a statement to the News Tribune on Tuesday, an EPA spokesperson said the letter of dissent included “inaccurate information” but did not respond to a question asking what in the letter was inaccurate.
“Following a thorough internal investigation, EPA supervisors made decisions on an individualized basis,” the spokesperson said. ”EPA does not comment on individual personnel matters. The petition — signed by employees using a combination of their titles and offices — contains inaccurate information designed to mislead the public about agency business.
“Thankfully, this represents a small fraction of the thousands of hard-working, dedicated EPA employees who are not trying to mislead and scare the American public.” “How is firing the people who keep Lake Superior and Minnesota’s waters clean and safe a good idea?” Smith said. “How does that benefit anyone? The sole reason they got fired is because they exercised their freedom of speech and dared to disagree with the Trump administration. I’m proud they had the guts to do it, to warn all of us. I don’t care who you voted for, you didn’t vote to fire scientists who keep our waters safe.”
Like much of the federal government, it’s been a turbulent eight months at the Duluth lab.
There had been speculation that the Trump administration would close the facility when plans to eliminate the Office of Research and Development, which oversees its operations, were announced earlier this year.
But on July 21, an EPA spokesperson said the Duluth lab and other research facilities would be spared.
The EPA also did not respond to the News Tribune’s question Tuesday seeking how many employees still work at the Duluth lab, which employed 176 people in April, according to a fact sheet.
Since then, however, funding ended for 25 early-career researchers when the EPA did not renew a contract and canceled a grant and federal staff have been urged to retire early or leave voluntarily.
Although Cole is beginning to look for other jobs, he said the Duluth lab has felt like “home” for him, both in the year he’s been there as a full-time employee and the time he spent there as a contracted early career researcher from 2018 to 2020.
Despite the challenges, he’s confident the remaining Duluth lab employees will continue to do good work.
“I have no doubt that the people doing the research there will be putting out world-class research,” Cole said.
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