
Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates - europa
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/315876-trump-bans-epa-employees-from-giving-social-media-updates
======
vmeson
We went through this sort of censorship of government scientists and
departments in Canada with the conservative Harper government:
[http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/faq-the-issues-around-
muzz...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/faq-the-issues-around-muzzling-
government-scientists-1.3079537)

The US should not put up with any, even a temporary form of such censorship of
the parts of the government that are doing scientific research and
environmental stewardship. There should be another march in a week or two to
support scientific freedom. Trump does not determine scientific truth, peer
review and the scientific method does.

~~~
dnautics
Peer review most certainly does not determine scientific truth.

~~~
cantankerous
This is a vacuous statement. Science is an inductive exercise and suffers from
the problem of induction. It's difficult to make the case that real truth can
come from it at all. In lieu of this, peer review is a very good heuristic for
sifting out bunk science.

~~~
lucajona
I don't think it's fair to call a correct statement vacuous. More nuanced than
it appears, and easily misinterpreted maybe.

I think it's fair to point out that peer review doesn't _determine_ scientific
truth, because that would get the causal relation in reverse.

Consensus has little to do with objective truth, but it is a useful heuristic
as you say.

~~~
marklgr
Yeah, let's put peer review into perspective. In a topic about Trump,
censoring scientists. I can see the "give science back to the people" anti-
intellectual slogans coming up.

~~~
lucajona
Those "anti-intellectual slogans" I think you mean can also be seen as
arguments for a return to enlightenment values instead of an entrenched,
elitist dogmatism.

Behind those slogans is the idea that intellectual life doesn't belong to a
chosen few, but to everyone who's interested and willing to engage their
capacity for independent thought and critical thinking, and those who are
willing and eager to engage with other people with different opinions.

~~~
marklgr
A lot of arguments can be seen as sensible until one realizes they were pushed
by people with a hidden agenda. It's often just the motte part of motte-and-
bailey arguments.

That's why there are people (eg. in Europe) who aggressively promote
secularism, and many agree with that, until you find out they belong to some
hateful anti-islam organization. And that's why some people put science into
question, like, how can we be sure of anything, which is defensible from an
epistemological standpoint, until you discover they are creationists.

So you want to be careful before giving random people the benefit of the
doubt.

~~~
dnautics
does 'being pushed by people with a hidden agenda' automatically invalidate
something? I'd say that that the American (and presumably European) political
establishment (both the right and the left) have a 'hidden agenda' of pushing
science because it creates a higher authority that they can appeal to justify
questionable policy choices. That doesn't mean I think all science is wrong.

~~~
marklgr
It does not invalidate anything, but that's beside the point; it's not about
valid or invalid arguments (their first one is almost always valid or
defensible), it's about getting into what you might think is a honest
discussion whose purpose is to find out the truth, whereas your interlocutor's
purpose is to unroll their rhetoric and influence you or the audience,
according to their hidden agenda. While you're only paying attention to logic
and validity, they win points and convince people around.

------
cyberferret
I am looking for reasonable explanations for this, but keep coming up blank. I
grew up in a country where this sort of censorship and fact hiding was the
norm, and hated it.

I now live in a country that is much freer, but for the first time since 1938,
no longer has an active US ambassador, with no replacement in sight, since
President Trump fired all US ambassadors to foreign countries on the afternoon
of his inauguration... [0]

[0] - [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-
trum...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-fires-
us-ambassadors-no-replacements-a7538256.html)

~~~
jquery
The existing social media managers are openly hostile to the new boss, with
irrelevant-to-their-organization tweets going out about the inauguration
crowd-size?

To your latter point regarding the fired ambassadors, it's the most scandalous
thing since 2008, when Obama did the exact same thing -
[http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/12/obama-gives-
poli...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/12/obama-gives-political-
ambassad.html)

~~~
whyileft
1\. The National Park Service hosted the event. Seems like it would make sense
to post public information about the crowd size when there was a lot of public
debate and misinformation about it. I understand your frustration thinking
they would always look out for the president's best interest, but this was a
pretty clear fact they were posting, not some kind of political opinion.

2\. December 3, 2008. That's when that article was published about giving
notice and starting to find replacements. Same as every other president does.

3\. Serious question. Are you paid to do what you are doing right now? I have
a really hard time understanding why you would post that link which is
specifically framed to spread misinformation as it is about a completely
different point in the presidency. Seriously, this is your country. Why would
you intentionally attempt to misinform your fellow citizens?

EDIT: I expect a response. You said Obama did the "exact same thing". Which is
an outright falsehood and posted an link that is from a different period to
intentionally misinform people. In some countries what you just did would be
considered a crime.

~~~
jquery
You're right, Obama didn't do the "exact same thing." He literally auctioned
off the posts, giving the ambassadorships to campaign contributors and
bundlers ( [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-ambassador-
nom...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-ambassador-nominees-
prompt-an-uproar-with-bungled-answers-lack-of-
ties/2014/02/14/20fb0fe4-94b2-11e3-83b9-1f024193bb84_story.html?utm_term=.1aeb225ea43d)
). It's easy to find replacements if you don't care about qualifications and
just reward your donor list, I guess. One of the ambassadors was so bad,
staffers working for her requested transfers to _Iraq_ and _Afghanistan_ \-
[http://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/report-rips-us-
envoy-w...](http://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/report-rips-us-envoy-who-
resigned-048843)

So, yes, some posts may be left without an immediate replacement, but it's not
cause for panic if the alternative is immediately filling the posts with
unqualified campaign donors.

EDIT: These are undisputed facts in response to a hostile question accusing me
of being a paid actor (ridiculous, my account is 8 years old) posting things
that would be a "crime" in other countries. People down-voting this should
check the irony considering they're upset at the President for censorship.

~~~
badsock
You were incorrect and you admitted it, which is good, but then you
immediately move the goalposts and then use that to pretend that you were
justified in your original assertation.

That's a shady rhetorical technique, and I suspect you're arguing in bad
faith. That's worth some downvotes.

~~~
jack9
> You were incorrect and you admitted it, which is good

Ironically, you are incorrect and have strangely doubled down on it in some
sort of pyrrhic victory dance of failure.

~~~
scrollaway
badsock has posted exactly once in this entire thread.

Give your fellow HNers the benefit of the doubt.

~~~
true_religion
It surprised me too. I thought he was the original poster, but the original
commenter was 'jquery'.

------
tristanj
Title appears to be clickbait. The original AP story [1] says this restriction
applies to the agency's social media accounts. It does not say this
restriction applies to employee's personal social media accounts, as
thehill.com implies. This is the relevant section from the AP article:

> _Emails sent to EPA staff and reviewed by The Associated Press also detailed
> specific prohibitions banning press releases, blog updates or posts to the
> agency 's social media accounts._

[1]
[https://www.apnews.com/5ada25fc57b44a0989e681d6dc2a3daf/Trum...](https://www.apnews.com/5ada25fc57b44a0989e681d6dc2a3daf/Trump-
admin-orders-EPA-contract-freeze-and-media-blackout)

~~~
Malician
I read the headline in the same manner as the AP section.

~~~
tristanj
Judging from other comments, a lot of people did not interpret it as you did.
People are asking if this is a 1st amendment violation and if this is
censorship.

~~~
jessriedel
Agreed, but those same people are also likely to mistake an employer's banning
of employees tweeting under the company name as also an infringement of the
1st amendment.

------
sqeaky
This is surprisly reasonable compared to what I thought it was going to say
when I heard about it first from others. The first I heard it was "A total
media blackout" on the EPA and other departments.

This article just says, that buzzfeed says, that goverment employees can't
post on Twitter and Facebook claiming their personal opinion is policy. Unless
I misread something, let me know if I did, or if this article is just wrong.

Edit: Other sources indicate other kinds of communications are stopped also,
it seems that it could be totally nefarious or just part of some kind of re-
organization. Are scientific papers block or not? Everything seems confused,
but the general tone seems to be hugely negative, what do know for certain?

~~~
belovedeagle
From what I can tell, there was a notice that public-facing communication be
put on hold. Then EPA employees started howling that since peer reviewed
articles are public, the administration had just ordered a gagging of all
scientific endeavors. The administration put out a clarification that of
course scientific articles weren't banned, upon which the media jumped on this
as evidence that "aha! So you did ban science and now we made you back down!"

I'm no fan of Trump but this behavior by the left is absolutely idiotic.

~~~
facetube
Who is "the left"? Be specific.

------
FreakyT
It's downright impressive how comic-book-evil this administration is. Next up,
the white house will presumably be moved to a volcano base with overly large
ventilation shafts.

~~~
krapp
They're not evil, they're "alternate good."

~~~
philangist
They're not wrong, they're alt right.

------
cool_look
(forced to use a side account to comment on this)

You have to look at it from the Trump teams point of view. They honestly don't
see that the 'free speech' argument holds water. They see it as abuse of a
public position to spread falsehoods.

Basically EPA employees in the Trump Team's view are perpetuating climate
alarmism ( again in the TT view ).

So they are stopping that.

Just flip it around just for a second. I'll choose an equivalent that would
cause liberals to shut down the twitter of an official.

Imagine a Department of Health official was tweeting photos of aborted
foetuses and keeping a tally "350 aborted this month. #whatawaste".

There would be calls to stop that official speaking out.

~~~
jamestnz
Yes, but there's a difference. Abortion is in many ways an issue of personal
conscience, rather than a simple scientific determination.

Climate change on the other hand, isn't controversial in reality. It's been
made controversial because some people have an interesting way of deciding
what is true or false.

There seems to be a certain mindset that treats wishful thinking as equivalent
in power to empirical evidence. So they start with what they want to be true,
and work backwards from there. For example: "It's inconvenient for my business
interests if climate change is true. Therefore it must be false."

Some people even work themselves all the way to: "... and therefore climate
change is a conspiracy invented by jealous scientists to screw over successful
capitalists like me".

~~~
cool_look
thats why my dreamt up example included just factual statements "350 this
month".

doesnt make it better though, does it ?

------
ajmurmann
This is so terrifying. Fixing environment that was destroyed takes a very long
time. Public land and parks that were given to companies can probably never be
taken back. Not to talk about mountains that were mined. All this might be
gone forever for some silly, antiquated mining or similar.

~~~
ryanx435
Lol. By your logic, we should revert all farmland west of the Appalachians
back to native prairie because it used to be public land before people moved
there.

~~~
abootstrapper
No, OP's logic is that we can't revert farmland west of the Appalachians back
to native prairie because it's practically impossible to "undevelop" land back
to its natural state. Thus we should focus on protecting currently undeveloped
land.

------
bluetwo
OK, I just watched for at least the 20th time some republican tell a TV
audience that EPA regulations have gotten "way out of control" and no one will
ask "EXACTLY WHICH REGULATIONS?"

~~~
hawkice
To be fair, the audience for that comment isn't aware of _any_ EPA regulations
and has no curiosity about it. They see the EPA not as a complex organization
with multiple goals and many tools to help them achieve those goals, but as a
part of something fundamentally wrong-headed.

~~~
bluetwo
Yep. But the only way to fight bad propaganda is with good questions.

~~~
convolvatron
look man. these are job creators. if they want to dump solvents in an estuary
(god, who uses words like estuary really), and bootstrap our way to a brighter
future including pastel tinted vinyl siding, who are we going to side with?
some pinhead whining about some cranes and shit or a red blooded american
businessman just trying to help his community?

------
rokosbasilisk
Just to add a reality check, the epa isnt some noble organization , they are
highly political and often incompentent.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2015/08/10/431223703/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2015/08/10/431223703/epa-says-it-released-3-million-gallons-of-
contaminated-water-into-river)

~~~
guelo
That chemical spill was a disaster caused by an accident when the EPA was
trying to manage the wastewater from a gold mine. The wastewater was created
by unregulated gold mining in the 20s. Trump wants to return us to those days
when industry was unregulated and created the pollution that has taken decades
to clean.

~~~
rokosbasilisk
Can you prove that. It sounds like he's doing exacting what obama did before.

Im pro environment but Im not naive to think you can separate corrupt politics
from this.

~~~
jly
Hardly. The man he has installed as the transitional leader of the EPA is a
firm climate change denier, but is also strongly opposed to the Endangered
Species Act as a violation of property rights. The nominee to head the EPA is
not much better. This administration represents a clear and present danger to
the environment and every species on the planet. I think Obama was just a
_tad_ better.

------
some-guy
Also happening with the National Parks Service [0].

[0] [http://gizmodo.com/national-park-service-banned-from-
tweetin...](http://gizmodo.com/national-park-service-banned-from-tweeting-
after-anti-t-1791449526)

~~~
monksy
Not sure I disagree with that order. The NPS intentionally retweeted a
political statement. (Showing the crowds for Obama's inauguration and Trumps)
It was a very stupid thing to do.

~~~
Pyxl101
Came here to make the same point:

It's not appropriate for the official social media account of a government
agency to tweet political content that criticizes the current President.
That's going too far, and I'm not surprised at all that they were told to shut
it.

~~~
mcphage
Showing the number of people who attended the inauguration is a criticism, all
of a sudden? That's some seriously thin skin.

~~~
xname2
Compare to the former president? Are you even serious?

~~~
mcphage
Fewer people attended the inauguration. I'm sorry that bothers you so much,
but it's the truth. If your solution to someone sharing the truth is to make
them shut up, then you got some serious issues.

~~~
xname2
The point is you can't use an office account to do this. Unbelievable.

------
jaynate
The irony of Trump mandating a no-social-media policy is palpable.

------
aplomb
Best guess is the group in the EPA isn't toeing the line he set, so he's
keeping a lid on things while he cleans house.

------
davesque
I've heard people say that this was a reaction to some tweets that an employee
sent out about the inauguration crowd sizes. If so, that would be a pretty
heavy-handed way to discipline that single employee.

------
RantyDave
Free speech gone in less than a week. Say what you like but he gets shit done.

------
talmand
I didn't know we had so many HN commenters that are experts at the inner
workings of Presidential transitions and for a fact know what's going behind
the scenes of the current transition. In some cases they somehow know
individual thoughts and motivations of people they likely don't know.

------
chmaynard
This reminds me of the observation during the 2016 campaign that "Trump is the
kind of person who brings a flamethrower to a stick fight".

------
liberte82
I'm consistently amazed at the number of Trump supporters on this site.

------
skynode
Why was this even posted here on HN? I don't think it's okay that HN should
become a microcosm of the political economy of the United States. Well, for
whatever it's worth, I hope California gets serious about secession.

~~~
chmaynard
> Why was this even posted here on HN?

That's why YC added the Hide button. With one click, you can simply hide posts
that don't interest you.

~~~
jquery
I flagged the post. Hiding the post is good for the user, but not good for the
community. Political posts on HN are fine, but should be relatively limited--
otherwise they would begin to dominate and ruin HN--and avoid alarmism (which
this article did not). In most cases, when politics is encouraged as a topic,
it becomes an echo-chamber as the winning partisans downvote the minority
until the minority is completely gone (see /r/politics).

~~~
skynode
I've seen so many intellectual forums overrun and finally ruined by political
posts (and they usually start with harmless posts) that do nothing but
engender the highest levels of divisiveness among members. Would be sad to see
HN fall into such a situation.

------
shshhdhs
I was curious if a case could be made for First Amendment rights, but I just
re-read it...

"Congress shall make no law regarding..."

I guess Executive Orders can bypass all of that.

~~~
woofyman
The president can't issue unconstitutional executive orders but has great
powers over the executive branch which this falls under.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Right. He can't stop you from saying what you want to say. He can stop you
from saying what you want to say _on an official Federal government platform_.

For that matter, many employers can do that. I can say whatever I please, but
not with my company name on it.

~~~
xname2
Exactly, can't believe so many people here lacking basic understanding of
professionalism. You can't use office account to deliver your personal
message.

~~~
vmeson
We'd need a specific example to determine if the communications were a
personal message, raw data supporting climate change or (unlikely) 5 sigma
confidence level results in say a temperature trend.

Personally, I struggle with the idea that scientists working for the federal
government have to report to or be muzzled by the current administration. I
see these people as working for the country not for the administration but I'm
naive and optimistic in general so I'm sure many people will point out that it
would be a crazy way to run a country.

In the Canadian case, scientist needed to request permission to attend
conferences months in advance and, from what I understand, if there was the
least chance of bad press coverage from the scientific results being
presented, then the person was not allowed to attend. I believe there was a
similar muzzling of attempts to publish in peer-reviewed papers. That sort of
thing is clearly not acceptable behaviour for a government administration.
Government organizations like the EPA are not companies trying to maximize
profit by selling a widget, they are researchers and regulators trying to
determine the best path for everyone in the country with respect to economics,
health, and environment.

------
annon111111
1984 here we go

