The internal watchdogs for President Donald Trump’s environmental agencies are seeing a significant increase in complaints and reports — particularly regarding alleged retaliation against whistleblowers.
The Department of Energy’s inspector general opened nine times as many whistleblower-retaliation cases in the first year of Trump’s second term than it did in the last year of Joe Biden’s administration, according to a NOTUS review of the inspectors general semiannual reports to Congress.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general referred roughly six times as many complaints to the office responsible for whistleblower retaliation for review.
The EPA referred 58 hotline calls related to whistleblower retaliation to the inspector general’s office in the 2025 fiscal year, compared to 9 total hotline calls referred in the 2024 fiscal year. At DOE, the inspector general’s office opened a total of 45 investigations into allegations of whistleblower retaliation in the 2025 fiscal year, compared to 5 investigations opened the previous fiscal year.
The EPA, DOE and the Department of the Interior also reported increased activity on their hotlines, where internal employees or people externally can call in and submit reports to watchdogs.
Interior did not provide a breakdown of whistleblower-retaliation statistics in any of its reports.
Federal employees are protected under the law from retaliation if they report internal wrongdoing, and inspectors general offices are responsible for investigating any allegations of retaliation. While the reports show an increase in tips, referrals and investigations, they don’t provide any further specifics or conclusions.
The first year of the Trump administration has been in large part defined by its attitudes toward the federal workforce; the administration has made no secret of dismissing dissenting voices, calling federal workers the “deep state” and encouraging staff to report on each other.
Mark Greenblatt, the former inspector general for Interior, who was one of the 17 inspectors general Trump fired in January, said the increase in reports is sizable and notable. But the numbers still carry a lot of uncertainty.
“It could be that the new Trump administration is ethically challenged, or it could be that people are trying to weaponize the IG by drowning them in complaints,” he said. “Or it’s possible that complaints could be coming from somewhere totally outside of the agency.”
The EPA, DOE and Interior did not respond to requests for comment.
These reports are also going to offices that Trump has slashed significantly since January.
Trump fired 17 inspectors general immediately after taking office in January, including the leaders for the three environmental agencies, and has since nominated several controversial picks to fill some of the open positions.
One, T. March Bell, Trump’s nominee for inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, said he will work to “support the initiatives of President Trump and Secretary Kennedy” during his confirmation hearing.
“Their background and experience raises a lot of red flags about their ability to be neutral and independent about the Trump administration or about looking back at the Biden administration,” Greenblatt said.
In September, the White House blocked funding for the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, the umbrella office that oversees the inspectors general in the federal agencies and publishes their reports.
The Trump administration restored the funding in mid-November, after extensive pressure from a handful of Senate Republicans.
The offices have lost a significant number of staff due to voluntary resignation and retirement programs. The Department of Energy’s inspector general’s office lost about 30% of its staff, according to its latest report. Neither the EPA nor Interior reports specify their staff losses, but Greenblatt said he saw a “sizable” number of investigators and auditors leave the administration.
Each federal agency reports different statistics to Congress, making it impossible to directly compare various departments.
Most federal agencies have not yet published their most recent semiannual reports to Congress, with many citing the government shutdown for the delay.
But the agencies that have offered a unique window into some of the undercovered impacts of the Trump administration’s complete reshaping of the federal workforce.
For example, the EPA’s most recent semiannual report described an ongoing scientific-integrity problem that began under the Biden administration and has continued under the Trump administration.
For the last several years, the inspector general has been trying to improve how scientific integrity concerns are investigated.
“In January 2025, we met with Office of Research and Development leaders to discuss our concerns. Further discussion on coordination procedures have been on hold pending the Agency’s comprehensive restructuring effort,” the report reads.
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