“I work at the EPA and yeah it’s as bad as you are hearing”

For those who don’t believe that Trump is at least an authoritarian/despot-wannabe, at at worst a fascist, check this out from the Director of Programs at Appalachian Voices. As one commenter puts it, this is “[t]he electronic equivalent of burning books!” (UPDATE: I just checked the EPA’s Twitter feed, and it hasn’t been updated since the day before Trump was inaugurated. Same thing with the EPA’s Facebook page. On the EPA website, there have been no news updates since Inauguration Day.  Also, nothing since January 19 on EPA’s YouTube channel, and nothing on its Instagram page since a final photo of President Obama and his EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. So, yeah, as far as I can tell, nothing’s coming out of EPA, at least so far, under the Orange Fascist administration.) (UPDATE #2: See Vox’s What the hell is going on at the EPA right now?) (UPDATE #3: Also see Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates and EPA science under scrutiny by Trump political staff and Trump administration reviewing EPA website, curbs agency communication and Trump’s Team at EPA Vetting ‘Controversial’ Public Meetings and Presentations, etc, etc. There are tons of articles on this…)

For those wondering if what’s going on inside the EPA is as bad as it sounds, here’s an account someone inside the agency gave to a friend of a friend:

“So I work at the EPA and yeah it’s as bad as you are hearing:

The entire agency is under lockdown, the website, facebook, twitter, you name it is static and can’t be updated. All reports, findings, permits and studies are frozen and not to be released. No presentations or meetings with outside groups are to be scheduled.

Any Press contacting us are to be directed to the Press Office which is also silenced and will give no response.

All grants and contracts are frozen from the contractors working on Superfund sites to grad school students working on their thesis.

We are still doing our work, writing reports, doing cancer modeling for pesticides hoping that this is temporary and we will be able to serve the public soon. But many of us are worried about an ideologically-fueled purging and if you use any federal data I advise you gather what you can now.

We have been told the website is being reworked to reflect the new administration’s policy.

Feel free to copy and paste, you all pay for the government and you should know what’s going on. I am posting this as a fellow citizen and not in any sort of official capacity.”