Rep. Chellie Pingree urged the Trump administration to reconsider its plans to eliminate positions that conduct scientific research for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, saying the move will harm public health and increase the influence of industrial polluters.

Pingree, D-1st District, and Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the top two Democrats on the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittees, which oversee EPA funding, also challenged the legality of the administration’s plans to move ahead with drastic reductions without congressional approval, including closing one-half to three-quarters of offices and eliminating more than 1,500 positions.

In a letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Pingree and Merkley said the EPA’s reduction-in-force plan, which would eliminate the Office of Research and Development, is “a blatant assault on science, public health and the agency’s core mission.”

“This reckless decision would erode the agency’s scientific foundation to the benefit of polluting industries at the expense of working-class communities and exacerbate climate change,” they said. “It is a betrayal of EPA’s obligation to the American people to understand and use the best available science and a violation of the law.”

The move comes as the Trump administration is moving aggressively to make drastic cuts to the federal government, workforce and spending — an effort that has Trump testing the constitutional limits of presidential power to override congressional spending decisions. The effort is led by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, which has been given access to sensitive government systems and information to identify programs and funding to cut.

Those efforts to shrink the executive branch have led to a slew of court challenges, with funding and programs being cut and then restored, either by court order or political pressure.

Zeldin has said he wants to cut 65% of the EPA’s roughly $10 billion budget — an initiative that drew praise from Trump during a cabinet meeting last month.

“President Trump, DOGE, and Administrator Zeldin are committed to cutting waste, fraud, and abuse,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Thursday. “Administrator Zeldin is committed to eliminating 65% of the EPA’s wasteful spending.”

Pingree and Merkley said EPA’s force reduction would eliminate more than 1,000 “critical positions,” including chemists, toxicologists and biologists, some of whom are studying the harmful health effects of forever chemicals on humans — an issue that Maine farmers have been confronting in recent years.

They said the force reductions “follow a pattern of politically motivated purges, where public servants reinstated by court order remain sidelined while allegiance to the president and his fossil fuel benefactors, not expertise, determines who stays and who goes.”

The cuts, they said, “will have devastating consequences.”

They said the president does not have the authority to impound any of the $758.1 million in funding for the EPA’s research initiatives that was included in the stopgap budget bill approved by Congress last week. They noted that the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to direct spending.

“We strongly urge you to immediately reverse course and abandon this dangerous plan,” they said. “The integrity of the EPA’s scientific research must be preserved to ensure sound policymaking and the continued protection of public health and the environment. The American people will not stand by while their air, water and communities are sacrificed for the profits of a few.”