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From Tweets to Scientific Papers, Federal Agencies Under Trump Ban Public Release of Information

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EPA Also Freezes Federal Grants

Employees at several federal agencies are being told they are no longer allowed to post public information to the public. Bans on communications outside their departments are being instituted at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and even the the National Park Service are being reported.

“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 reports. 

In a department-wide email Sharon Drumm, chief of staff for the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) told employees “news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content,” is banned from being released to the public.

It is unclear if Drumm would require a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to obtain the simplest of information going forward, or even if that would be honored.

The USDA is far from alone.

“Multiple federal agencies have told their employees to cease communications with members of Congress and the press,” The Huffington Post reports. “Officials at sub-agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services, for example, have been told not to send ‘any correspondence to public officials’ according to a memo shared with HuffPost.”

It’s unclear if these information bans are coming from the White House, or are in response to a White House attack on the National Park Service, which was berated by the Trump administration after it retweeted an image comparing the crowd sizes of Donald Trump’s inauguration to that of President Barack Obama’s.

The Huffington Post notes that “there also appears to be a lockdown on external communication at the Environmental Protection Agency. As HuffPost reported Monday, a memo went out within the agency following a briefing for communication directors.”

The memo said there would be no press releases, social media posts or blog messages until further notice. It also asked for a list of external speaking engagements for staff and any planned webinars. It warned that listservs would be reviewed and that staff should “only send out critical messages, as messages can be shared broadly and end up in the press.”

The EPA has also frozen its grants, sources told HuffPost on Monday. ProPublica later confirmed that freeze, as well as a stop on federal contracts, in an interview with transition sources.

According to CNN, this was the tweet the NPS retweeted, which drew that anger of the White House:

That retweet has since been deleted. This was posted next:

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer Tuesday at 1:52 PM EST was asked about the “gag” during the press briefing and responded he had no information to share but would look into it:

 

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White House Responds to ‘Stone-Cold Loser’ Carville After Devastating Prediction

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In a rare move, the White House is pushing back against James Carville, after the longtime political consultant and prolific pundit predicted that Donald Trump’s presidency would end within the next year.

“I’m saying this right now,” Carville declared on his Politicon podcast. “You’re not going to be president a year from now. You’re too soft a man. You’re too weak. Your support is draining out.”

“People are going to be on to you. And when the Democrats get back in office in January, they’re going right after the corruption,” Carville added.

“We’re going to find out all the money that has gone the wrong way, and we’re going to have a legal proceeding, and we’re going to have what you call a clawback,” he said.

The White House, in a statement to Fox News, slammed Carville.

READ MORE: Where Were Republicans as Trump Zigzagged on Iran War and Peace?

“James Carville is a stone-cold loser who suffers from a severe and incurable disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome, and it has rotted his peanut-sized brain,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told Fox News Digital in a statement.

Carville had other strong words for the president.

“You’re so screwed,” he warned, before referring to a New York Times article.

“They’re leaking on you like crazy,” Carville said.  “You can’t trust anybody. Your staff is leaking on you. The Pentagon is leaking on you. The State Department is leaking out here. Everybody is dumping all over you, loser. And, you know, this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

He also warned the president about Vice President JD Vance’s loyalty, and later said, “you’re done, dude. You’re really done. No one fears you anymore. Your own staff doesn’t fear you.”

“But, dude, you and I know something,” Carville continued. “We got a little secret between me and you. You’re done. People hate you. Trust no one. Be as paranoid as you possibly be, because you can’t be paranoid enough.”

READ MORE: Will ‘Sputtering’ Trump Ever Learn His Lesson?: Columnist

 

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Will ‘Sputtering’ Trump Ever Learn His Lesson?: Columnist

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As his tenuous ceasefire approaches the 48-hour mark, President Donald Trump remains a “foolhardy and unpredictable executive-in-training” who got “schooled” by Iran, writes Trump biographer and Bloomberg columnist Timothy L. O’Brien.

In addition to costing American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, Trump’s Iran war has cost the lives of American soldiers, and thousands of Iranians. The economic tab may soon approach $100 billion, says O’Brien. But there have also been enormous “reputational, civic and strategic costs” for America.

“In the run-up to a two-week ceasefire announced on Tuesday evening, the president took to social media and the airwaves to warn Iran and the world that ‘a whole civilization will die’ and he intended to bomb the country ‘back to the stone ages.’ He brushed off questions about whether he was willing to commit war crimes by noting that Iranians are ‘animals.'”

Trump’s “dangerous and reckless flexes” may have just been him “bluffing, but sophisticated dealmakers know that undeliverable threats backfire when your bluff is called” — and Iran “called Trump’s bluff.”

READ MORE: Where Were Republicans as Trump Zigzagged on Iran War and Peace?

Now, writes O’Brien, Trump is, “essentially, a downed power line. If he is left to his own devices, sputtering, further conflagrations could consume the Middle East.”

O’Brien reminds that once elected, presidents “should come to the job with tangible aptitudes for management, leadership, policy, rationality and decency,” and not need the White House to be their “finishing school.”

But “largely uneducable,” Trump faces an Iran ceasefire that “is a recess of sorts for the world’s most powerful and incendiary pupil, and he may return to class having failed to absorb his studies.”

Trump is a “blinkered, close-minded leader,” charges O’Brien, and “a serial bankruptcy artist” who, before entering the White House, “was never an adept dealmaker.”

A “serious student” would try to learn from the ceasefire. But a cornered Trump may become “even more dangerous and thuggish.”

Ultimately, Trump “will be measured by whether he defines his Iranian studies by weeks of failed exams — or commits himself to years of mindless and cataclysmic classwork.”

READ MORE: Trump Rages in Incoherent Truth Social Rant

 

Image via Reuters 

 

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Bill Kristol Diagnoses Trump’s ‘Conquistador’ Complex

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Conservative commentator Bill Kristol suggests President Donald Trump has a “conquistador” complex — which is a complete reversal from how he campaigned in 2024, on “no new wars.”

“If Kamala wins, only death and destruction await because she is the candidate of endless wars. I am the candidate of peace. I am peace,” Trump declared during his 2024 campaign.

“These war hawks, they want to draft your kids to die in wars, and they will never fight themselves,” Trump said, days before the 2024 election.

The night he won, Trump told supporters, “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

Kristol writes at The Bulwark, “We haven’t heard much talk recently from the president about wars we’re not getting into.”

“Will one consequence of his humiliating failure in Iran be a return to such a stance? Perhaps the difficulties of the last two weeks have diminished Trump’s interest in foreign excursions?” he asks. “Appears not. A taste for foreign adventures seems to have lodged itself in Trump’s brain.”

READ MORE: Trump Rages in Incoherent Truth Social Rant

He points to Trump just weeks ago saying, “Cuba is ​next by the way.”

Just yesterday, Trump returned his focus to Greenland.

“NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN. REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Thursday night, Trump appeared to threaten Iran again, declaring that all “U.S. Ships, Aircraft, and Military Personnel, with additional Ammunition, Weaponry, and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal prosecution and destruction of an already substantially degraded Enemy, will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with.”

He concluded: “In the meantime our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest. AMERICA IS BACK!”

Kristol notes that it is unusual for an American president to “proclaim ‘Conquest’ as his goal. In his June 6, 1944 D-Day prayer, President Roosevelt said that American soldiers ‘fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate.'”

But for this president, “the dream of foreign conquest seems to have become a more central part of Trump’s personal sense of grandiosity, not to say megalomania, than it was earlier in his career.”

READ MORE: Trump Administration Wants Protected Health Records of Federal Workers

 

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