Trump bans government scientists from sharing their work | Hacker News Reader

Trump bans government scientists from sharing their work

rawstory.com

35 pointsHugoDaniel15 comments

Seriously, is this just all hot air? Or is this stuff really happening as reported?

I'd be demanding a revolution to overthrow the US government if any one of a few things I've heard about recently happened... but it's a steady stream of unbelievable stuff and the narrative seems to be: This is happening. The End.

Sure, there have been protests, but is that it? Is there no legal challenge? Has the great American democracy, with its checks and balances, decided to lie down and die?

Disclaimer: I'm not in the US so have limited knowledge but the whole thing seems bizarre looking on from abroad.

Protests take time to organize and legal challenges take time to go through the courts. Meanwhile Trump is machine gun firing executive orders. As far as checks and balances are concerned, both the executive branch and both chambers of the legislative branch are Republican. So it falls to the judicial branch to provide those checks and balances and as I said earlier, legal challenges take time. The biggest mistake we can make at this time is to give up hope and become apathetic in fighting for our ideals. We need to remember it's darkest before the dawn.

> We need to remember it's darkest before the dawn.

I never understood this proverb, and find it utterly nonsensical. It's darkest at bloody midnight. Before the actual dawn, it has already begun to brighten up for quite a while.

It's not even midnight yet. This is day 5 of the Trump presidency. If you want to use the daylight metaphor, and if Trump is darkness, it's dusk.

Technically 6 hours before is still "before"... the proverb isn't "it's darkest immediately before dawn"

The Buzzfeed article has an excerpt from the memo, as follows:

"Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents. This includes, but is not limited to, news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content."

It's been reversed, but yes, that's a ban on sharing research.

I would have loved some checks and balances on Obama, Alas, he is the one that set this up. After enough presidents have unlimited runs, something has to change.

Welcome to Brazil.

@tristanj 10 hours ago:

Title appears to be clickbait. The original AP story [1] says this restriction applies to the agency's social media accounts. It does not say this restriction applies to employee's personal social media accounts, as thehill.com implies. This is the relevant section from the AP article:

> Emails sent to EPA staff and reviewed by The Associated Press also detailed specific prohibitions banning press releases, blog updates or posts to the agency's social media accounts.

[1] https://www.apnews.com/5ada25fc57b44a0989e681d6dc2a3daf/Trum...

Or maybe this is all fake news. I have read the article and I have found the two "magic words" of the globalists: media and ecology.

So, calm down and let's see if this is real or not. Keep in mind they ( the media in particular ) are trying to demonize Trump as much as possible ( no, there is no plurality of information, afterall all the media are in the hands of only 5 corporations ).

The EPA has to report to public by law! Bejesus, this is serious and could be a pre-emptive strike to prevent public reporting on draughts, pollution, especially industrial.

Unbelievable, really.

Disclaimer: was EPA Research Fellow in 2000.

Of course. You can't control the narrative without controlling "the facts".

Active discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13477258 (237 comments)

> ... from sharing their work

They are banned from tweeting, not sharing research papers.

If tweeting is thier only "work", then they should be disbanded altogether...

"Those “public-facing documents” include news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds and social media content, said Sharon Drumm, chief of staff of the Agricultural Research Service."

The wikipedia entry for Hacker News needs to be changed. It currently reads:

"Hacker News is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship."

Politics needs to be added. What a fucking joke. Someone regex the submissions.

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