National Park deletes factual tweets about climate change amid Trump crackdown on agencies
A US National Park deleted several tweets on Tuesday highlighting the effects of climate change amid an apparent crackdown on federal agencies issued by President Donald Trump barring them from publicly sharing information.
Hours after Trump green-lit the construction of two pipelines and said separately environmentalism had "gone too far," Badlands National Park tweeted, and subsequently erased, a number of tweets highlighting facts that showed the effects of climate change.
The deletions came after several agencies ordered their communications staff to halt external communication, in some cases with lawmakers and the public.
The Huffington Post reported that Department of Health and Human Services employees were barred from sharing information with public officials. The Environmental Protection Agency also issued a memo ordering staff to halt tweeting and sharing press releases, while several divisions within the Department of Agriculture also received similar directives requesting employees halt sharing information with the public.
On Tuesday, Democrats lamented the deleted tweets.
"Vladimir Putin would be proud," Democratic National Committee spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.
Environmental activists widely decried Trump's moves on Tuesday.
NextGen Climate President Tom Steyer characterized Trump's executive actions as putting "corporate interests ahead of American interests," saying the pipelines would harm the environment, while eschewing long-term green energy infrastructure that could create renewable energy jobs.
"For us to spend money to build, improve, and lock us into fossil fuel infrastructure - it is going to be bad from an environmental standpoint and a greenhouse gas standpoint, which is also going to raise our costs and make us less competitive," the billionaire environmental activist told Business Insider in a telephone interview. "It's really stupid."