Trump declares himself an environmentalist ...while he declares media black-out on Environmental Protection Agency

A paranoid, delusional psycho is destroying your country and you just sit on your asses and shrug. All I can do is protest, and believe me, I have. You can take action against someone, who potentially, could destroy the world and has made a very good start in just four days. So what are you doing? I am so pissed off with all the bullshit, I am leaving this site for a while. The Genie

EPA staff banned from releasing press statements, blog updates and social media posts, Associated Press reports.


Trump has declared himself an environmentalist [EPA]

Donald Trump's administration has instituted a media blackout at the country's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and barred staff from awarding any new contracts or grants, according to the Associated Press news agency.

Emails sent to EPA staff since Trump's inauguration on Friday and reviewed by The Associated Press detailed the specific prohibitions banning press releases, blog updates or posts to the agency's social media accounts, the news agency reported on Tuesday.

The Trump administration also ordered a "temporary suspension" on all new business activities at the department, including issuing task orders or work assignments to EPA contractors, it said.

The orders are expected to have a significant and immediate impact on EPA activities nationwide. The EPA did not respond to phone calls and emails requesting comment on Monday or Tuesday. In a test of what the new administration will tolerate, the official Twitter account of the Badlands National Park published a series of posts Tuesday accurately quoting climate science data that included the current record-setting high concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The tweets were soon deleted.

Environmentalists said the orders were having a chilling effect on EPA staff, many of whom were suffering from low morale. Trump and Pruitt have both been frequent critics of the agency and have questioned the validity of climate science showing that the Earth is warming and man-made carbon emissions are to blame.
Liz Perera, climate policy director for the Sierra Club, said Trump's move to freeze all EPA communications and contracts should be "a major red flag for all Americans."
"EPA was created to ensure that all Americans can enjoy clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and have their health protected from environmental and climate threats," Perera said. Some staff at the Agriculture Department also received orders not to release any documents to the public.
"This includes, but is not limited to, news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds and social media content," read an email to staff at the agency's Agricultural Research Service, which was obtained by the AP.
ARS spokesman Christopher Bentley said the ban would not include scientific publications released through peer-reviewed professional journals.
"As the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific in-house research agency, ARS values and is committed to maintaining the free flow of information between our scientists and the American public as we strive to find solutions to agricultural problems affecting America," Bentley said, according to a statement.

Meanwhile, during a meeting with executives from the auto industry, Trump described himself as an environmentalist. He did not elaborate on why he views himself as an environmentalist, but the comments came after urging companies from the auto industry and beyond to bring jobs back to the US.

On Monday he made similar comments at a business breakfast, stating again without elaborating, "I'm a very big person when it comes to the environment. I have received awards on the environment".
On Tuesday, Trump signed two executive orders to advance the Keystone XL and the Dakota Access pipelines, drawing outrage from activists who have serious concerns over the potential damages to land and water sites that the oil-carrying pipelines could cause.
Erich Pica, the president of Friends of the Earth, a network of environmental organizations, condemned Trump's move in a statement on Tuesday. She accused the president of pledging "his allegiance to the oil companies and Wall Street banks that stand to profit from the destruction of public health and the environment"


Trump admin tells National Park Service to halt tweets


The AP reported over the weekend that staff at the Interior Department were temporarily ordered to stop making posts to its Twitter account. The prohibition came after the official account of the National Park Service, a bureau of the department, retweeted a pair of posts that negatively compared the crowd sizes at Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration to Donald Trump's inauguration Friday. Representatives from the new administration asked the Interior Department's digital team to temporarily stop using Twitter -- a decision the agency now claims was out of a concern the account was hacked.
 Whatever happened to freedom of speech and standing up for the truth?