If any other transition team were querying government departments for the kind of information the Trumplodytes have been seeking, few people would be uptight about it. But there are plenty of reasons to shudder when these are the guys doing the asking. Josh Rogin reports:
The Trump transition team instructed the State Department to turn over all information Wednesday about “gender-related staffing, programming, and funding,” setting off alarm bells among those who fear that the new administration is going to purge programs that promote women’s equality along with the people who work on them. [...]
I obtained a copy of the State Department request, which said each office should include information on all existing programs and activities that “promote gender equality, such as ending gender-based violence, promoting women’s participation in economic and political spheres, entrepreneurship, etc.”
Earlier this week, we learned that the team had asked State Department employees to account for how much money the agency has spent on international environmental organizations.
Unlike the transitioners’ sortie into the Department of Energy regarding climate change that stirred fears a week ago, these times they aren’t asking for individual names of the civil servants doing the work. That change might, under normal circumstances, be taken as a sign that they have wised up.
But this is the unpresidented-elect’s crew. In a post-Jan. 20 world, they might avoid harassing and otherwise giving a hard time to government employees engaged in those programs and activities. Or they might not. But even if they don’t behave that way, the attitudes expressed by Trump and his chosen few about women, transgender persons, marriage equality, and the like are a good indication that these programs, at State and elsewhere in the federal government, are headed for the shredder.
Anybody possessed of happy nostalgia for the America of the 1950s should buckle up—because it appears they’re going to find out what those years were actually like.