The lead spokesman for President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team said Tuesday that scientists will likely have to seek approval before publishing or presenting research during a transition period to the new administration. That would be a departure from the current EPA practice ensuring scientific publication without interference.
In an interview with NPR Tuesday, Doug Ericksen, the communications director of Trump’s EPA transition team, said that research from agency scientists would likely need to be reviewed on a “case by case” basis.
“We’ll take a look at what’s happening so that the voice coming from the EPA is one that’s going to reflect the new administration,” Ericksen told NPR, adding: “We’re on Day 2 here. …You’ve got to give us a few days to get our feet underneath us.”
NPR noted that Ericksen’s proposal would violate the EPA’s scientific integrity policy, which claims to “[protect] Agency scientists,” and which “[p]rohibits all EPA employees, including scientists, managers, and other Agency leadership, from suppressing, altering, or otherwise impeding the timely release of scientific findings or conclusions.”
Ericksen, a state senator in Washington, was tapped for his transition team job over the weekend, the Seattle Times reported.
On Tuesday, ProPublica and the Huffington Post reported that the Trump administration had ordered the EPA to immediately suspend the awarding of grants and contracts. It was unclear whether that included existing contracts, as well.
Later on Tuesday, EPA employees told the Huffington Post that they had been instructed by the administration to remove their website’s climate change page, which contained “years of work we have done on climate change,” according to one unnamed EPA staffer.
Myron Ebell, Trump’s EPA transition team chief, told the publication that he expected that “the web pages will be taken down, but the links and information will be available.”
