12-14-2016, 06:13 PM
Quote:The questionnaire President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team sent to the Department of Energy arrived with little fanfare (neither Al Gore nor Kanye West were dispatched as couriers), but it was delivered with the expectation that word of its contents would filter down to employees at every level of the agency. Among other unusual inquiries, it included a request for the names of officials and contractors who helped the government forge a global deal to combat climate change and worked on related efforts to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.Trump’s Witch Hunts Are Having a Huge Chilling Effect | New Republic
On Tuesday, the Department responded to Trump with a bold-lettered refusal: “We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team.” The solace to dedicated civil servants will last for another 37 days. After that, it’s anyone’s guess how aggressively Trump’s administration will seek to dismiss or marginalize government employees and contractors who study and implement environmental policy.
Trump hasn’t limited his intimidation to government employees who present obstacles to untrammeled power, either. His targets have included not-particularly-sympathetic institutions like Boeing and highly vulnerable individuals, like Chuck Jones, the president of the local steelworkers union that represents employees of Carrier.
Menacing phone calls followed after Trump attacked Jones on Twitter. So far none of Trump’s named enemies has been hurt, but the risk of harm is plain, as anyone who’s followed the Comet Pizza saga knows.
The less tangible threat, though, is to the willingness of dissidents to criticize the Trump government, out of fear that Trump will harm their businesses, or that his unhinged supporters will harm their families. How many people will see what happened to Jones and others and decide raising objections isn’t worth it?
Over the course of the campaign, Trump singled out one federal judge and multiple political journalists for abuse. Some of those journalists (along with many others whom Trump never targeted directly) were subsequently inundated with bigoted, violence-drenched messages from Trump supporters, both online and, more ominously, at their home addresses.