The White House is seeking to cut more than $2.5 billion from the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency — an overall reduction of more than 23 percent. The fiscal 2019 proposal released Monday marks the Trump administration’s latest attempt to shrink the reach of an agency the president once promised to reduce to “little tidbits.” The EPA already has lost hundreds of employees to  buyouts and retirements over the past year, and its staffing is now at  Reagan-era levels.

President Donald Trump reserves a special level of antipathy for the Environmental Protection Agency. He campaigned on eliminating the EPA "in almost every form," and his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, declared that its climate change programs "waste your money." But his full budget wish list released Tuesday actually assigns a dollar value to his promises. In it, the EPA faces the steepest cut of any agency or department across the government, a 31.4 percent reduction, to $5.7 billion, its lowest level in 40 years.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is in the crosshairs of the White House. The White House is seeking to slash the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget by 17 percent, imposing big cuts to research and satellite programs, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post.