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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: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday January 25 2017, @11:11PM
Plus, asserting that we live in a "post-factual world" implies that truth, falsehood, lies, facts don't have meaning. However, true things are still true and false things are still false. Whether anyone agrees with them or not. Whether anyone *knows about* them or not.
Even saying that we live in a "post-factual world" as a criticism of those so confused as to not recognize the difference between things which exist in reality and things that do not does a disservice to the relative importance of information and its value.
It would be possible to have a world in which facts were much much less important, but not to "live" in such a world, because it would be unpopulated.