Rightwing attitudes toward science

[Admin]

At the EPA, the administration has  ordered that "all contract and grant awards be temporarily suspended, effective immediately," ProPublica writers Andrew Revkin and Jesse Eisinger report, quoting an internal EPA email they obtained. Myron Ebell, the climate change denier who led the Trump team's EPA transition and directs the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, confirmed the suspension, Revkin and Eisenger report.

If you can prevent public agencies from conducting vital functions, "you can say they don't do anything, and justify cutting their funding." That's potentially a massive blow to the agency's core functions, says Patty Lovera, assistant director of the environmental watchdog group Food & Water Watch. "The EPA's not necessarily out there running a bulldozer to clean up a toxic site," she says. Superfund, an EPA program responsible for cleaning up the nation's most contaminated land, is executed through contracts, she said.

The EPA turns to contractors for "tons of water stuff, too"—from monitoring water quality downstream from polluters to helping municipalities update water infrastructure to avoid toxins. "It's one thing to put a pause on new contracts so they can be reviewed, but to reach back and stop existing ones is a whole other can of worms," Lovera said.

Trump Just Ordered Government Scientists to Hide Facts From the Public | Mother Jones