What we actually lose when the USDA and EPA can’t talk to the public | Hacker News Reader

What we actually lose when the USDA and EPA can’t talk to the public

popsci.com

119 pointsbeardog44 comments

On Monday, news broke that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now barred from communicating with the public. That means no press releases, blogs, messages, or social media postings. And early this morning, Buzzfeed revealed that The US Department of Agriculture has banned scientists and other employees in its Agricultural Research Service division from sharing the results of its taxpayer-funded research with the broader public.

Well, no surprise here, because they told us what they would do if elected. And this is just a continuation of what happened towards the end of the last Bush admin when govt scientists were required to clear any publicly-directed communication with political appointees.

The Constitution commits the executive branch to the control of an elected official: the President. Direct communications with the public undermines the notion that agencies are simply bodies that exist to assist the President, and reinforces the notion that they are an unelected fourth branch of government with their own continuity and agendas.

To use an analogy: Samsung should be forthright to the public about exploding Note 7's. But that doesn't mean that Samsung's engineering department should be issuing its own press releases.

That's a good argument that the president shouldn't formally be denied this power. But it doesn't rebut the claim that it's a bad sign, and that the public might reasonably want to keep track of those signs. Likewise, many tech companies have engineering blogs, and it's reasonable for people to interpret this transparency as a good sign.

A better argument would say that these agencies have been staffed with folks who have irreconcilable ideological disagreements with Trump about the proper role and extent of federal regulation. If firing them en mass is infeasible, restricting their ability to undermine his agenda may be the next best option.

I agree it's a very bad sign.

On the other hand, it's not very smart: it cedes to low-level employees at these agencies a huge amount of control over the policy agenda. Before NPS employees at Badlands "went rogue" today tweeting about climate change, how much influence did they have? And how much do they have now?

They probably have as little influence over the agenda tomorrow as they did yesterday, but in the minds of people who don't understand how government works that does not feel true, which is perhaps dangerous, because it moves the ball from "actual policy" into "what ended up in my Twitter feed."

Regardless of one's opinions on climate change it demonstrates a profound, profound lack of understanding of how government works to think that the big change this week in US policy relevant to climate policy happened on Twitter and not on the TPP.

I think I'm just making the observation that in the absence of the administration's crackdown policy, the NPS employee's ability to written up in the news media for climate change concerns was nil.

It's a bad sign if it's permanent. If it's a temporary thing related to the change in power, e.g. they intend to issue new guidelines, then it may be nothing at all.

I think it should be permanent. There's nothing about climate change that's an emergency situation, desperately requiring the officials in charge of the situation to communicate directly to the public---and in 140 character tweets no less.

Talking directly to the public makes their role political, and not scientific or bureaucratic as it really ought to be.

So which of these is your argument?

A) executive branch departments should not be doing public research into environmental, agriculture, and other issues.

B) The President should vet all such research for accuracy before being made public, despite not having scientific experience in these fields.

C) The President should vet all such research for political reasons, and refuse to publicize research that conflicts with his or her agenda regardless of the accuracy of the research.

You must agree with one of these. I don't.

(D) The President should put in place a process for agencies to recommend release of reports, relying in good faith on agency recommendations in doing so while retaining ultimate authority and accountability over what is released.

Back to the Samsung example: the engineering department almost certainly prepared that pretty graphic explaining the causes of battery failure. But it was the company acting as one entity that ultimately reviewed that disclosure and made the decision to publish it.

FWIW, I have a lot more faith in a company that allows its engineers to communicate directly with the public. If there's something in particular that should remain quiet, then that should be handled as such on a case-by-case basis.

Moreover, as others have noted, the EPA is a public institution, and should be answerable to the public.

This is authoritarianism, and nothing else. Control, intimidation, and fear.

The EPA functioned fine with Obama. Trump just doesn't want to be answerable for what he knows are unpopular policies.

He didn't win a majority of the vote, it's on his mind (he feels obliged to explain this with paranoid conspiracies regarding immigrants). He knows that what he does is going to get pushback from the public, and he doesn't want it.

I've worked for the USDA-ARS. In general, you're overestimating the value and validity of what any independent public employee might have to say. Doubly so for the USDA-ARS.

I mean, based solely on how people here are talking, that a bunch of old hippies, bucolic farmers, and bug ranchers holed up in their hillside facilities aren't the savviest ad people and shouldn't be given unfiltered loudspeakers on behalf of their departments would not be the most imprudent decision.

I know PhDs who look like they fell out of King of the Hill and still go on about "that old bitch Pelosi". Great scientists, know the natural world with a depth and intimacy few can attain, but who will make you want to punch them in the face on every other topic, which they love to share their opinions on. As long as you don't cut off their research (whose direction is set by the president), the world will be alright.

Just please don't ever give them the Twitter login.

Your (D) option works when things are approved, and is likely the closest thing that happened with Samsung.

However, when the President decides to not allow information out, despite the agency's expert opinion, it falls flat.

For example, climate change is nearly unanimously accepted by experts as fact, however now all mentions of it are being erased. How is that not a case of (C) mentioned above?

The process in place ought to be the bureaucracy of the cabinet or department. That's why the president appoints the leaders of each department. That's different than the president requiring all releases to go outside their relevant department for permission.

Your analogy is flawed in that Samsung is a private entity which owes no accountability to anyone other than its shareholders. But government here is a res publica, that is a public matter. Executive authority necessitates hierarchical structures as a purely practical matter, but the notion that executive authority should be unlimited is untenable - as a practical matter.

Edit: of course Samsung has obligations towards regulators and those governmental entities whose issuance of a charter permit it a corporate existence, but I think you get the point I'm making.

In my view the Constitution is on life support and has been for some time, most notably when the Senate last year abrogated its constitutional duty to advise the President by even granting his nominee a hearing; they could have voted against every nominee Obama presented but that legislative body had an obligation to at least examine said nominees.

I don't wish to have a long argument about politics here on HN but I will say that I think the US is headed towards and existential crisis and that the results of the last election affect only the timing of that.

Has the president set up an alternative system to promptly and comprehensively communicate public research to the public? Has he given any indication as to what problem this action is solving? Why has he chosen only these particular departments to muzzle? Aren't the press departments of every other executive agency continuing to reinforce the notion that they are an unelected fourth branch of government with their own continuity and agendas?

I think your analogy is reasonable to a point, although corporations and governments are very different. To continue it, is the president going to be forthright to the public about climate change, if the EPA is no longer allowed to issue its own press releases?

Edit: Sorry, these agencies are not the only two that have received gag orders: https://sunlightfoundation.com/list-of-federal-government-ag...

Still, it's not every executive agency.

If his press sec is any indication, he will only allow their narrative to be told which will more than likely be filled with lies and omissions.

Chances are the press secretary does not want to be compared to Baghdad Bob (Comical Ali in UK and elsewhere). So he's going to have to get it together, sorta like he did today when asked whether he (personally) believed there were 3-5 million "illegal" voters in the election; and he did not say yes, he clearly said the president believes that. Whether the president is a liar or delusional is maybe not a significant distinction, but the press secretary can't tell a bald faced lie more than once, and Spicer just did that on Saturday. My bet is he is either canned or quits within 6 months, and for Trump Time, this will be more like 3 months.

What's the lie? I'm not seeing it.

Is it a lie that the president believes this? His belief doesn't make it true, nor does it mean that its been studied in depth.

It's like when prosecutors talk about court cases, they always say they believe someone is a criminal, sheer scum, and ought to be in prison for life. In fact, none of that has been proven true yet because the court is still in session. It could turn out that the prosecuter is delusional, was fed poor information, or is simply inept.

I'm referring to Saturday's statement as the lie: crowd size, magnetometers, mats, metro numbers. All false information, easily verifiable, and the very next day was called alternative facts by a member of his own team.

Tuesday, reporting what the president believes is the proper way to do it, rather than stating a bunch of falsehoods as if they are facts. So I'm considering Tuesday a Spicer recovery with residual damage of trust. The president on the other hand, proposes without evidence the are millions of criminal voters, while he's the law and order guy, who's not immediately investigating his own concern about electoral integrity. That's bat guano.

He did say that there's a 2008 Pew study that shows 14% of voters are non-citizens, which is a lie.

Which makes him different from what other major office holder?

Sure, but when the executive branch is also waging a disinformation campaign on undisputable facts, where merely saying things makes them true, is going to have consequences.

Ok, agreed. However: if I'm a Samsung shareholder, I want some insight into what's going on there. The law requires them to be transparent. And for good reason. Sunlight is a great disinfectant.

Same goes for the government. I don't want it to be a black box.

"If you don't have anything to hide.."

> Direct communications with the public undermines the notion that agencies are simply bodies that exist to assist the President, and reinforces the notion that they are an unelected fourth branch of government with their own continuity and agendas.

Cut 75% of the regulations, cut 75% of the federal employees.

1.5 million Americans will need to find real jobs again instead of being beneficiaries of the teet of one of the largest Federal socialist programs. Some might even be qualified to work on the new socialist construction program on the wall. I'll start the colloquialism "The Watch".

Only the ones necessary to actually assist the President remain.

Not exactly opposed to the idea

Exactly correct. The EPA in particular was created by an executive order, rather than by Congress, so theoretically President Trump could make it disappear by executive order.

For thoroughness, the EPA was proposed by an executive order from Nixon that was sent to and ratified by both houses of congress. It was mostly a consolidation and strengthening of roles previous distributed throughout the executive branch, and was a response to widespread concern about the environment as well as the executive branch's legal responsibility to implement laws such as NEPA.

There are 619 mentions of the exact phrase "Environmental Protection Agency" in the US Code. I think that a Trump administration would have a hard time fulfilling the requirements of 49 USC §44715(a)(1)(B) (to pick just one example) without there being an EPA.

There is a key difference between Samsung and the Presidency of a democratic nation. Given that the president or his designated officials sets policy on a wide range of public issues, at some level the reports and opinions of speciality departments under the President should be available for public oversight. We can argue about what level, but no availability would seem to be a extreme that leaves the public dangerously blind.

Would you be arguing that if Hillary Clinton had won and ordered the FBI to stop communicating with the public?

Somehow I doubt it.

The Constitution doesn't change depending on who is in power. I happen to agree with the folks that think the administrative state is basically unconstitutional: https://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv22n2/delegation.pdf. But I'd also love for Congress to pass laws outright banning coal use, gasoline cars, and dumping pollutants into waterways.

> But I'd also love for Congress to pass laws outright banning coal use, gasoline cars, and dumping pollutants into waterways.

The Constitution hasn't been respected in decades. There is an entrenched deep state in the US, controlled by powerful corporate and industrial interests that are accountable to no one.

I can't answer for that person, but I certainly would.

I'm not exactly opposed to the idea of a more focused executive branch. The federal government has largely assumed many roles simply by finding itself as a logical resourceful intermediary.

Who is "they told us what they would do if elected"? The department heads?

These agencies currently have no top leadership. My understanding is that this is just temporary until new cabinet secretaries are confirmed and can set communications policies. They don't want a situation where they have to issue releases a week later saying "strike that, reverse that!"

This site is where the sober-minded logical people go to discuss things, so let's save the anti-Trump panic for when the FEMA death camps open up or something.

So this has happened every time the presidency has changed from one party to the other?

I heard a news report that what happened at DHHS was normal. What happened at the EPA was not.

The USDA has since released some statement that there was some confusion, and the gag order email should not have gone out and was incorrect.

> On Monday, news broke that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now barred from communicating with the public

No, an "an internal email sent to staff at [the USDA's] Agricultural Research Service unit this week calling for a suspension of 'public-facing documents, including news releases and photos, WAS FLAWED AND...NEW GUIDANCE WOULD BE ISSUED TO REPLACE IT" [1] (emphasis mine).

From what I can tell, Popular Science got this drivel from this Buzzfeed article [2].

EDIT: Pardon me, got the EPA and USDA confused.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-usda-idUSKBN1582...

[2] https://www.buzzfeed.com/dinograndoni/trump-usda?utm_term=.q...

1. After we got caught saying "no more public communications", we are going to find a nicer way to say "no more public communications".

2. Buzzfeed notes that in addition to the leaked (and therefore questionable) policy emails, in fact there have been no new social media posts from the agencies in question.

No, similar things happened at multiple agencies. The EPA was one of them.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/01/24/us/politics/ap-us...

> WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has instituted a media blackout at the Environmental Protection Agency and barred staff from awarding any new contracts or grants, part of a broader communications clampdown within the executive branch.

The EPA order is real, and separate from the USDA one: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/environmental-protection...

Edit: You can see the full list of gag order reports here: https://sunlightfoundation.com/list-of-federal-government-ag...

You're right--thank you. Sincere apologies to Buzzfeed :)

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