As the Trump administration races to silence scientists in government, some federal employees are mounting small but visible resistance efforts. The Twitter account for Badlands National Park posted a stream of climate facts today, seemingly in protest of the Trump administration’s gag order on the Environmental Protection Agency. But the tweets later disappeared after gaining traction online.
The Trump administration is cracking down on Twitter criticism
The casual deletion follows a strange and unsettling turn of events last week, when someone with access to the @NatlParkService account undid several sly anti-Trump retweets just hours after Trump’s inauguration. In an email sent to government employees and obtained by Gizmodo, it appeared that a high-ranking member of the Trump administration, if not Trump himself, got wind of the criticism and issued a top-down order for the NPS to cease all Twitter operations.
After a public apology on Saturday, the NPS account and other affiliated handles resumed activity. Still, the brief and observed social media blackout has become a shining example of the silencing tactics the Trump Administration may use against any an all members of the government who don’t fall in line.
The @BadlandsNPS climate tweets have been deleted. I took screenshots. pic.twitter.com/YB5RKvAUFX
— Wendy Thurm (@hangingsliders) January 24, 2017
In response to the EPA gag order and other incidents of Twitter crackdowns, Democratic National Committee press Adrienne Watson issued a blunt statement today: “Vladimir Putin would be proud.”