There are a lot of changes brewing, particularly with regard to the EPA and the USDA. These departments, who all work at the pleasure of the President, have been told to stop the extracurricular communication.
Trump silences scientists at EPA, USDA A message sent to EPA staff on Monday prohibits staff from creating press releases, blogs, messages, or any social media postings concerning their taxpayer funded work. The US Department of Agriculture has banned scientists and other employees in its main research division from publicly sharing everything from the summaries of scientific papers to USDA-branded tweets as it starts to adjust to life under the Trump administration.
The EPA was also directed to shut down their climate page.
Trump administration tells EPA to cut climate page from website The employees were notified by EPA officials on Tuesday that the administration had instructed EPA’s communications team to remove the website’s climate change page, which contains links to scientific global warming research, as well as detailed data on emissions.
EPA’s Climate page is just the regurgitation of junk science data from other departments so it is not the loss some might claim. But EPA should get used to this. The GOP and Trump have designs on returning almost all of its authority back to the states and reducing the Federal entity to a fraction of its budget with a minimal staff. A committee of state representatives would meet now and again to address any cross-border concerns and issue reports to the President. Something like that.
EPA has also been told to freeze everything from hiring to grants to contracts to new regulations.
And no, Mr. Trump. I am not yet tired of ‘winning.’
