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🥵Very hot and humid, with highs around 90 and showers likely. Sunset is at 8:22 p.m.

Today we have an inside look at Boston Environmental Protection Agency employees who were suspended after signing a letter of dissent against the Trump administration. But first, an update on a story you read in this newsletter last week: the Trump administration yesterday said it will revoke the legal status of tens of thousands of Honduran and Nicaraguan immigrants who are in the U.S. under the temporary protected status program. Once the announcement is officially published in the federal register which will likely happen this week, they will have 60 days until their legal status expires.

“We’re going to do whatever is possible to do in the court to defend the rights for our kids,” Patricia Carvajal, a TPS recipient who has been in the U.S. since she was a child, told GBH’s Sarah Betancourt. “We have families that depend on us. And we’re going to do this for them, because they need us. My daughter needs me next to her.”

Four Things to Know

1. Digging a little deeper into the state budget Gov. Maura Healey signed over the weekend: the $60.9 billion pot of money will go to things like health care, education and transportation. But the state will delay paying for $125 million in earmarks (special projects or programs lawmakers put into the budget to benefit people in their districts) until the fall.

Also: the state’s executive branch will stay in a hiring freeze through the end of June 2026, and previously promised 2% raises for executive branch managers are no longer happening.

2. Yesterday was the first day of a trial in Boston’s federal courthouse over the Trump administration’s practice of targeting people involved in protests over the war in Gaza on American college campuses.

“In describing their policy of ideological deportation, the government has again and again conflated legitimate political protests — pro-Palestinian anti-war speech — with support of Hamas and antisemitic activity. And it has done that to suggest that this speech somehow poses a threat to national security,” lead attorney Ramya Krishnan said. Attorneys for the Department of Justice argued that the plaintiffs case is a “misunderstanding of the First Amendment,” which they claim does not apply the same way in immigration contexts.

3. A group of doctors and public health workers is suing U.S. Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying the decision to stop recommending COVID vaccines for most kids and pregnant people is confusing and not supported by scientific evidence. One of the plaintiffs is a doctor in Massachusetts who is pregnant and could not get a vaccine.

“We, like every other plaintiff, are concerned about the impact of the secretary’s directives on the confidence of the public but also on our members and their ability to maintain and promote the public health,” said another plaintiff, Carlene Pavlos, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Health Alliance.

4. If you’re in Newburyport — as a resident or a visitor — by the end of this month, you’ll be able to rent a bike to get around the seaside town’s Clipper City Rail Trail (here’s a map of bikeshare locations). Bike rentals will cost $3 for 30 minutes, and there will also be monthly memberships available for $30 a month.

“The purpose of the pilot program is really to prove that it can be a valuable addition to our transportation system,” Newburyport Livable Streets President Rick Taintor told GBH’s Diane Adame. “And not only in Newburyport. We’re hoping that it will expand to the surrounding towns because we are so interconnected through our trail systems.”

EPA employees ‘shocked’ over suspensions for signing a letter of dissent

An employee in the Environmental Protection Agency who signed a letter expressing dissent against “the current administration’s focus on harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA actions and disregard for scientific expertise” was among 139 EPA workers — including five in the Boston office — put on paid leave last week.

“I chose to use my name for that because it’s something I believed in and I do want to look back at this time and be able to say that I stood up for something,” the employee told GBH News’ Craig LeMoult, speaking on the condition that GBH will not use their name. “I took this job for a reason. I want to protect the environment, protect public health, and I don’t think that that’s necessarily happening right now with the rhetoric coming from the current administration. So I chose to sign it.”

The employee said they got an email notifying them of the leave, followed by a call from human resources.

“They would be looking to see if I used agency time or resources to sign the letter,” the employee said. “I asked the HR rep if I didn’t use agency time and resources, would that mean I would be fine? They said that they could not answer that.”

An EPA spokesperson told GBH News that “the Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November.”

The letter, which you can read in full here, accuses EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin of ignoring the EPA’s own research to side with industries polluting the environment.

“Given the mission of our agency and our responsibility to the public in swearing an oath to the Constitution as public servants, we felt that characterizing, for example, coal as a fuel source as 'beautiful and clean,' was essentially contradicting our mission at the agency, in the sense that this is a fuel source that is known to emit more pollutants than other types of fuels and causes harm to public health,” said Undine Kipka, a union steward who works in the Boston office and signed the letter too.

The employee who was put on leave last week said they’re waiting to hear what will happen.

“I mean, this administration hasn’t been known to do things by the book,” the employee said. “So anything is possible. I definitely recognize that, and I am worried about it, but I wouldn’t change what I did. And we’ll face what comes, and I’ll keep fighting for what I think is right, regardless of what happens.”

Read more of Craig LeMoult’s reporting on this story here.