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Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates
- annon111111 10y ago1984 here we go
- FreakyT 10y agoIt'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.
- gdulli 10y agoIt would be hard for Trump to get such an ambitious project done given his reputation for not paying contractors.
- serge2k 10y agoThe nearby native inhabitants are going to pay for it.
- serge2k 10y agoI don't really see evil. I see a combination of incompetence and hard right-wing policy. I really don't like the latter, but at least you can argue it (e.g. pulling out of TPP is a perfectly reasonable position to take). The former is just... ugh. Huge numbers of unfilled positions, firing all the ambassadors with no replacements, completely unqualified cabinet nominees (DeVos, Carson, Perry).
- ams6110 10y agoTrump is not hard right-wing. I'm not sure what he is, time will tell, but he's not that.
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoI'm guessing mental illness at this point. The unsubstantiated voter fraud accusation is moving me to that conclusion. We should expect to see more of this, there is no one to moderate his behavior that I can see at this point.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- craigvn 10y agoHe appears to be exceptional at one thing, manipulating people. The right wing have been manipulated by Trump for his own agenda, which I suspect is just a lust for power. People seem to miss that Trump is trying to set up a dynasty, he plans after he ends as President to ensure his daughter/son/son-in-law are all succeeding him, like the Bush's or the Kennedy's but much greater.
- intended 10y agoI think it's much worse and much dumber. Trump saw an opportunity and went for it with everything he had. He used modern tools and knew how to apply it to the modern public. He knew his audience and his audience also knew how to navigate the new medium. I doubt he expected to do so well when he started but apparently the old world institutions and cultural protections of pre 1990 are well and truly dead. Tomorrow someone else is going to navigate this path, and they are going to do it better.
- eli_gottlieb 10y agoThe problem here is that there are two different typical definitions of "far-right", possibly even three. * Minarcho-capitalist, "Snow Crash"-style. Absolutely minimal government, only contracts and property titles being enforced. On everything else, you're free-to-starve. * Religious dominionism, Mike Pence style. "Electrocute the gay away". Scary and weird. Kinda like a Middle Eastern country. * So-called "right-wing populism", aka fascism. Trump's typical style. Very nationalistic, often claiming to adopt left-wing economic policies like industrial management and regional equalization while actually installing policies more similar to the minarcho-capitalists, but with more corruption. Dog-whistles to religion but no real religiosity. Military parades in the streets, Orwellian blatant lies, etc. Cult of leadership.
- krapp 10y agoThey're not evil, they're "alternate good."
- philangist 10y agoThey're not wrong, they're alt right.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- shshhdhs 10y agoI 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.
- brianwawok 10y agoPresedential power has grown a LOT in the past 50 years. I still think we have a strong enough constitution to prevent a Hitler, but not as sure as I would have been in the previous generation.
- iainmerrick 10y agoIt almost entirely depends on the willingness of Congress to enforce the rules, and more importantly the spirit of the rules. I say "amost" because the Supreme Court has a part to play, but it's in a bad shape right now (highly polarized, split 50-50, with an opening for just about any old stooge to be helicoptered in).
- woofyman 10y agoThe president can't issue unconstitutional executive orders but has great powers over the executive branch which this falls under.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoRight. 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 10y agoExactly, can't believe so many people here lacking basic understanding of professionalism. You can't use office account to deliver your personal message.
- cyberferret 10y agoI 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-trump-fires-us-ambassadors-no-replacements-a7538256.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trum...
- barney54 10y agoHere's an explanation--the new management of the agencies want to review the social media policies.
- Avshalom 10y ago> social media policies social media policies is sci-fi way of saying "people saying things" though.
- barney54 10y agoTrue, but this isn't a case of people speaking from their own point of view. The social media account represent the Departments in an official capacity.
- joshkpeterson 10y agoThis is great and all, but climate change is going to kill a lot of people so......
- cyberferret 10y agoIn my line of business, I get to inherit web and mobile apps from other developers all the time. One thing I never do is to completely shut down the app and take it offline while I scour through the code to ensure everything is ok. Not unless there is a glaring problem or security hole that is already evident. It is ironic that the person giving the orders to restrict his subordinates from tweeting can still continue tweeting his stream of consciousness stuff carte blanche...
- some-guy 10y agoAlso happening with the National Parks Service [0]. [0] http://gizmodo.com/national-park-service-banned-from-tweeting-after-anti-t-1791449526 http://gizmodo.com/national-park-service-banned-from-tweetin...
- monksy 10y agoNot 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 10y agoCame 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.
- iandanforth 10y agoNPS is in charge of the National Mall. They are heavily invested in the truth of statements about their work. Just as it was appropriate for intelligence officials to state they believed Russia hacked DNC servers, it is appropriate for the agency in charge to correct, lets be generous, misstatements about how many people attended an event they helped coordinate.
- monksy 10y agoIt is incredibly appropriate for the security services to state suspicion/evidence of foreign maleficence. (If it's true.. if it's a political suggestion.. they should be punished for propaganda) Although, Wikileaks has been nothing but consistent in stating it wasn't rush that gave them the leaks. It is fine for NPS to report occurrences. However, it was not fine for them to make a comparison of inaugurations. The offices of the government should and always should remain neutral. They should be judged on doing their job properly. Should the EPA pretend to be Milo on how they think that Trump's/Rep party's ignorance on Global Warming is bad? No they should be advising us on upcoming, and current threads, showing superfund cleanup efforts, creating effective change, etc. It's hard to judge an organization correctly when it's trying to play politics. When you're wrestling with a pig, you're going to both get dirty, but in the end the politican likes it.
- tristanj 10y agoTitle 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/Trump-admin-orders-EPA-contract-freeze-and-media-blackout https://www.apnews.com/5ada25fc57b44a0989e681d6dc2a3daf/Trum...
- Malician 10y agoI read the headline in the same manner as the AP section.
- tristanj 10y agoJudging 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 10y agoAgreed, 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.
- bluetwo 10y agoOK, 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 10y agoTo 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 10y agoYep. But the only way to fight bad propaganda is with good questions.
- convolvatron 10y agolook 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?
- throwaway91111 10y agoWho asks non vetted questions anymore?
- ryanx435 10y agoDo you guys seriously have no self awareness? You seem to view trumps supporters not as a complex group of people with multiple goals but as part of something fundamentally wrong-headed. The hypocrisy is dumbfounding
- hawkice 10y ago
- sqeaky 10y agoThis 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?
- nikdaheratik 10y agoAs far as private accounts go, there are already social media policies in place just as in most other large organisations. They already have policies that govern scientific papers as well and those haven't been overridden. The administration just doesn't know how to communicate what it wants (which is for no one to talk to the media without "their people" in place), and to make it worse they don't have a timetable on when their media people are in place because they don't have people who know what they are doing running the transition. This gives government employees who have their own agenda (and not necessarily left-vs-right wing either) the ability to control the message by leaking to the press.
- belovedeagle 10y agoFrom 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 10y agoWho is "the left"? Be specific.
- ajmurmann 10y agoThis 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 10y agoLol. 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 10y agoNo, 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.
- rokosbasilisk 10y agoJust 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/epa-says-it-released-3-million-gallons-of-contaminated-water-into-river http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/08/10/431223703/...
- diogenescynic 10y agoRegardless, the EPA has done vastly more good than harm[1] and the remedy for bad speech is always more speech--not censorship. 1:https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-epa-first-40-years/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-epa-first-40-...
- guelo 10y agoThat 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 10y agoCan 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.
- kupaka 10y agoFrom https://www.whitehouse.gov/america-first-energy https://www.whitehouse.gov/america-first-energy: >For too long, we’ve been held back by burdensome regulations on our energy industry. President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule.
- jly 10y agoHardly. 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.
- vmeson 10y agoWe 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-muzzling-government-scientists-1.3079537 http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/faq-the-issues-around-muzz... 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.
- dghughes 10y agoYes it's amazing we put up with it for so long and then voted for Harper again!! My guess is it was apathetic young voters and frightened Boomers who lost 1/3 or half of their retirement savings in 2008 just as they were going to retire. Harper even changed Government of Canada to the Harper Government too bizarre at the time even more bizarre looking back. There was supposedly a secret portrait library of all portraits of Harper viewing by appointment only.
- vkou 10y agoThe Liberal party being in shambles for... 8 years probably had more to do with a Harper victory then his accomplishments did.
- acomjean 10y agoFwiw at the march in Boston there were chants for science...honestly something I thought I'd never hear.
- stephancoral 10y agoAt the protest in NYC people were shouting "CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL" Very sad that's something we need to be screaming in the streets.
- dnautics 10y agoPeer review most certainly does not determine scientific truth.
- aplomb 10y agoBest 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.
- jaynate 10y agoThe irony of Trump mandating a no-social-media policy is palpable.
- davesque 10y agoI'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 10y agoFree speech gone in less than a week. Say what you like but he gets shit done.
- cool_look 10y ago(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.
- kartan 10y agoThat argument holds for everything. It is the full relativism: there is not good or bad, there is not true or falsehood, there are just opinions. That reasoning is flawed, as true facts exists and there are ways to get to that facts like the scientific method. And morality exists, not every action is just relative. The last part is that oil industry has paid big to silence science about climate change. "Conflict of interest" is another big point against Trump teams "point of view".
- jamestnz 10y agoYes, 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 10y agothats why my dreamt up example included just factual statements "350 this month". doesnt make it better though, does it ?
- skynode 10y agoWhy 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 10y ago> 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 10y agoI 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 10y agoI'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.
- chmaynard 10y agoThis reminds me of the observation during the 2016 campaign that "Trump is the kind of person who brings a flamethrower to a stick fight".
- talmand 10y agoI 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.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- liberte82 10y agoI'm consistently amazed at the number of Trump supporters on this site.