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Agencies Told to Halt Communications as Trump Administration Moves In - New York Times

3:33 PM


“I’ve lived through many transitions, and I don’t think this is a story,” said a senior E.P.A. career official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media on the matter. “I don’t think it’s fair to call it a gag order. This is standard practice. And the move with regard to the grants, when a new administration comes in, you run things by them before you update the website.”


But environmental advocates and Democrats took advantage of the moves, noting that they appeared to target agencies that focus on environmental protection and scientific research, and calling them a chilling signal that the Trump administration intends to suppress communication about science and environmental policy.

If nothing else, the memos and ensuing reaction furthered the impression of turmoil throughout the government as Mr. Trump tries to assert control.

“These actions will stem the free flow of information and have a chilling effect on staff in these agencies,” said Sam Adams, the United States director of the World Resources Institute, a Washington research organization. “This flies in the face of effective policy-making, which requires an open exchange of ideas, supported by the best science and evidence available.”

Environmentalists also criticized what appeared to be a Twitter war between some Interior Department employees and their new bosses, as the agency appeared to delete Twitter posts by National Park Service employees that highlighted the smaller attendance at Mr. Trump’s inauguration than at Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, as well as facts about climate change.

Rebellious posts on social media became so plentiful from so many obscure sites that the management of the Interior Department appeared powerless to find them all.

After the Badlands Twitter posts were taken down, employees at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site, a national historic site, ended Tuesday evening by quoting the first President Roosevelt on free speech.

But it is far from clear how realistic the response has been. The Agriculture Department memo to employees came from Tom Vilsack, an Obama administration appointee and the departing agriculture secretary. It was measured in tone.


“In order for the department to deliver unified, consistent messages, it’s important for the office of the secretary to be consulted on media inquiries and proposed responses to questions related to legislation, budgets, hot-button policy issues and regulations,” wrote Mr. Vilsack, a former Democratic governor of Iowa. “Policy-related statements should not be made to the press without notifying or consulting with the office of the secretary.”


A spokesman for the E.P.A. described the freeze on grants as a short-term pause in order for the new administration to review them. “They’re not being canceled; they’re delayed so we can review the contracts,” said Douglas Ericksen, the spokesman.

Michael Young, the acting deputy secretary of the Agriculture Department, who has worked as a career civil servant in the department for 33 years, wrote a memo to employees guiding them to consult the secretary’s office when responding to news media inquiries, and he said the memo was little different than the one that was issued during the transition to Mr. Obama’s administration.

“This memo is not some sort of creative writing exercise,” he said. “This is almost exactly what was issued eight years ago. I just updated it a bit.”

Mr. Young said that the rationale for the memo was that the more than 100,000 people working across the country and even internationally for the department had been working for eight years under a set of priorities and policies that would now change. “Before we issue some policy-related announcement or before agencies take these other actions, we just need to have a review of it,” he said. “It’s not meant to stop it, it’s not even meant to delay it, it’s just common practice to have news releases reviewed and reports reviewed.”

Asked about the memos at a news briefing on Tuesday, the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, told reporters that the White House was “looking into it.”

“I don’t think it’s any surprise that when there’s an administration turnover, that we’re going to review the policies,” he said.

But the changes in the National Park Service’s Twitter account highlighted the new challenges of conducting a transition in the era of Twitter.

It started when the National Park Service retweeted crowd shots this weekend attesting to a smaller audience for Mr. Trump’s inauguration than for Mr. Obama’s in 2009.


That prompted a blackout, then an apology, then the posting of lots of pretty pictures from national parks.

On Tuesday, however, the Twitter account of Badlands National Park began posting facts about climate change — which Mr. Trump has called a “hoax” perpetuated by the Chinese. The account posted, for example, “Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. #climate.”

Those posts were soon deleted, but employees at other national parks appeared to step in, as the Golden Gate National Recreation Area’s Twitter account noted that NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had recently named 2016 the hottest year on record because of human-caused climate change.



Correction: January 25, 2017

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency. He is Douglas Ericksen, not Erickson. The article also misstated the name of the acting deputy secretary of the Agriculture Department. He is Michael Young, not Michael Thomas.




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