By Phil Plait
...This may be true. BuzzFeed and the Associated Press, (click here) however, obtained internal emails from the EPA and USDA that indicate the new administration is gagging people at the two government agencies, forbidding them from tweeting, going on any social media, or issuing press releases about their science. The only news they are allowed to issue must be vetted first. Also, in the case of the EPA, a Trump administration order has frozen grants and any new business. Note that the EPA has been under heavy attack by the GOP for years.
Frozen grants will prevent new business. Those monies are spent. They generate commerce. The more agencies are deprived their funding the economy will be effected.
RESEARCH equates to NEW BUSINESS! In case no one in the Trump White House recognizes the word, research is the same thing as R&D. C students at the Warton School of Economics (click here) (a division of the PUBLIC university; "University of Pennsylvania"), may have missed that part of their education.
For what it’s worth, the USDA has disavowed the order … kind of. They say, “This internal email was released without Departmental direction, and prior to Departmental guidance being issued. ARS [Agricultural Research Service] will be providing updated direction to its staff." So they’re not saying it wasn’t true or wasn’t issued, they’re just saying that it wasn’t issued officially. We’ll see soon how this will play out. Update, Jan. 25, 2017, at 16:30 UTC: After the public outcry, the USDA has rescinded the gag order. BuzzFeed has the story.
Update, Jan. 25, 2017, at 22:00 UTC: The Trump administration has told EPA employees to "stand down" and not take down the climate change pages. This is potentially great news, but I will take it with a grain of salt: Doug Ericksen, a Washington state senator and climate change denier, is part of the transition team for the EPA and has been quoted as saying, "We’re looking at scrubbing [the climate section of the EPA site] up a bit, putting a little freshener on it, and getting it back up to the public." Given that Erickson doubts climate change even exists, that statement fills me with little confidence....
I agree with Reuters. Reuters is one of the few international media organizations that all others rely on. It also respected as an accurate media service that brings information to USA intelligence and military contractors. Reuters doesn't mess around, it has a job to do and it will carry it out in a way that is effective and reliable.
There are many, many lies put forth by the Trump White House on a daily if not hourly basis. The intention is to steer inflammatory statements away from the operations of this administration and it's majority Congress.
February 1, 2017
By Lizzie Dearden
One of the world’s largest news agencies (click here) has instructed its journalists to "practice skills learned" in hostile countries and warzones while reporting on the Trump administration.
In a message to thousands of Reuters reporters and photographers, its editor-in-chief offered advice on how to address the many “challenges” raised by Donald Trump’s presidency.
“It’s not every day that a US President calls journalists ‘among the most dishonest human beings on earth’ or that his chief strategist dubs the media ‘the opposition party’,” Steve Adler wrote.
“We don’t know yet how sharp the Trump administration’s attacks will be over time or to what extent those attacks will be accompanied by legal restrictions on our news-gathering.”...
