Per Buzzfeed:
The US Department of Agriculture has banned scientists and other employees in its main research division from publicly sharing everything from the summaries of scientific papers to USDA-branded tweets as it starts to adjust to life under the Trump administration, BuzzFeed News has learned.
According to an email sent Monday morning, the department told staff — including some 2,000 scientists — at the agency’s main in-house research arm, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), to stop communicating with the public about taxpayer-funded work.
“Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents,” Sharon Drumm, chief of staff for ARS, wrote in a department-wide email shared with BuzzFeed News.
“This includes, but is not limited to, news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content,” she added.
www.buzzfeed.com/...Gag order on Dept of Agriculture
Coming after the gag order on the EPA about the freezing of grants, this starts to solidify the process whereby we learn what Big Brother wants us to know, and vice versa, about inconvenient things like the pollution created by agribusiness and the health effects of certain practices.
Fact sheets are incredibly helpful to the public — we have paid for this research and this writing with our tax dollars — can he just steal it, and smother it, and Big Brother it?
And the GOP are right on board.
After praising the President on the House floor for things like his “stamina,” and “conviction,” Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) criticized the press for, in his view, skipping over the Trump's positive attributes.
“No, the national liberal media won’t print that or air it or post it,” Smith said. “Better to get your news directly from the President. In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/lamar-smith-trump-liberal-media
Time to make phone calls!!!! My strategy is to call the offices of GOP senators I think might have a reasonable bone somewhere in their body, but it’s up to you.
Crowd size is a DISTRACTION, while the country and reality get stolen from right under our noses.