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The Trump administration has frozen grants and contracts by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to ProPublica, and blocked employees from providing updates on this change via social media. This could have big effects on the agency's budget and severely undercut its efforts.
In an email obtained by ProPublica, one EPA contractor writes that: "The new EPA administration has asked that all contract and grant awards be temporarily suspended, effective immediately. Until we receive further clarification, this includes task orders and work assignments."
Also, employees have been banned from providing updates to reporters or on social media. The internal memo specifies that no press releases will go out to external audiences, there will be "no blog messages" and media requests will be carefully screened. (Interestingly, the Department of Energy, a fellow federal agency, recently released new guidelines that specifically protects contractors and ensures that they can state their personal opinions.)
Source: The Verge
takyon: Here are some related stories happening at the same time:
USDA scrambles to ease concerns after researchers were ordered to stop publishing news releases, other documents
USDA disavows gag-order emailed to scientific research unit
Commerce nominee Ross promises to protect "peer-reviewed research" at NOAA
CDC postpones climate conference ahead of Trump takeover
Badlands National Park goes rogue with climate-change tweets
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 25 2017, @06:02PM
I know that's the Democratic Party line right now, but there's exactly zero evidence that has been made available that supports the idea that Trump is some kind of Manchurian Candidate. In particular, the evidence the Democrats are citing in support of that notion doesn't add up:
- The hack of John Podesta's emails was a phishing scam sent out of a Tor exit node that could have been pulled off by anybody with some basic technical knowledge.
- The release of the DNC emails could have been by a DNC insider passing some USB sticks to Craig Murray, who then could pass them to Julian Assange. The FBI nor any other US government agency has been allowed to look at the DNC's computers to find out more about what happened.
- The propaganda machine the DNC is all hysterical about is simply Russia's state-funded media, and other outlets that pick up the Russian media's stories. Russian-funded stories, like all news stories, may or may not be true.
- The blackmail material Russia supposedly has on Trump has already been released, and had no substantial effects.
- The financial ties may or may not exist, but nobody's been able to demonstrate what they are.
I vote more often for Democrats than other political parties, but that line of attack smells like BS. Let's just attack Trump for the stuff he actually does.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.