The Trump administration has frozen grants and contracts by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to ProPublica, and blocked employees from providing updates on this change via social media. This could have big effects on the agency’s budget and severely undercut its efforts.
In an email obtained by ProPublica, one EPA contractor writes that: “The new EPA administration has asked that all contract and grant awards be temporarily suspended, effective immediately. Until we receive further clarification, this includes task orders and work assignments.”
Also, employees have been banned from providing updates to reporters or on social media. The internal memo specifies that no press releases will go out to external audiences, there will be “no blog messages” and media requests will be carefully screened. (Interestingly, the Department of Energy, a fellow federal agency, recently released new guidelines that specifically protects contractors and ensures that they can state their personal opinions.)
For now, other details about the frozen grants still unclear. We don’t know whether the freeze affects all existing contracts — worth about $6.4 billion — or just new grants and contracts. The move is likely to be widely felt, though; in 2013, the EPA awarded $9.6 billion in grants and about $1.4 billion in contracts. Last year, the total budget was $8.6 billion, with the money for grants and contracts given to organizations at every level, from local nonprofits to state governments.