13. Environmental Protection Agency · Notable · Day one
Pause and review all EPA contracts above $100,000
Printed page 436 13. Environmental Protection Agency
“Pause for review all contracts above $100,000 with a heavy focus on major external peer reviews and regulatory models.”
What has happened
- Partially done
EPA ran the review and it produced cancellations. By 2025-03-10 the Administrator described "a line-by-line review of spending" that with DOGE had canceled more than 400 grants in a fourth round, bringing total claimed savings above $2 billion, and reported that the first round had canceled "grants and contracts related to DEI and environmental justice" and ended more than a million dollars in media subscriptions. What the Quote asked for and did not get is the mechanism: no pause of all contracts above $100,000, and no heavy focus on major external peer reviews or regulatory models.
- Attempted
Executive Order 14222 directed every agency head to build a system recording and justifying each payment under covered contracts and grants and to "review all existing covered contracts and grants and, where appropriate and consistent with applicable law, terminate or modify" them, and to obtain approval before entering new ones. It sets no dollar threshold and says nothing about peer reviews or regulatory models.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- One negative search covered the EPA science, appointee and advisory-body asks on pp. 436-437.
- Same reading an earlier review gave #1049, where a grants review that ran and produced cancellations without publishing a standing test is partial.
- A Day One ask; EO 14222 came five weeks in and the EPA review a fortnight after that.
- Action
- restrict
- Object
- EPA contracts above $100,000
- ID
- 1156