thelibrawrian:

thelibrawrian:

beachdeath:

lepidosauria:

Trump just banned National Park Services from tweeting until further notice because they made fun of the size of the inauguration turnout.

Which means his administration will likely be doing this for any government agency that spreads any news, information, or jokes they don’t like.

I’m Uncomfortable

actually, national park services didn’t even make fun of the inauguration turnout. this was the tweet they retweeted:

there’s no joke here, no fun-making, nothing even remotely derogatory. national park services retweeted a completely impartial tweet and two undoctored photographs of real events, without any commentary or editorializing, and they were banned from tweeting. literally just for acknowledging objective reality.

The Gizmodo article that this is originally sourced from has some additional info, including text of a notice sent out to NPS employees that reads:

And then yesterday morning, 1/21 at 10:41 AM, NPS tweets:

Did you just feel a chill run down your spine or is that just me?

Also, the Washington Post and NYT have a write-up about this as well, in case you doubt Gizmodo as a source.

There are a lot of comments in the notes on this post yelling about freedom of speech, etc., but just as a reminder, if you are a government employee acting in an official capacity, you can absolutely be fired and legally censored for the things that you say and do. You are acting as an agent and representative of the federal government and therefore the federal government gets to decide what you’re allowed to say. The thing that should scare you about this is that instead of firing a single employee for going a little off-script, the White House directed an entire agency to immediately cease Twitter communications, even in case of emergency notifications. That is the “not normal” part of this. It’s an extreme overreaction to two tweets that are defensibly on-topic for the NPS to have retweeted under any normal circumstances.