NASA now has a Rogue Twitter account. Here’s why

One of the things Trump first did as President of the United States is to stop officials and government staff (including scientists) of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from speaking out publicly. This, combined with his appointment of known climate change denier Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA, has many people concerned about censorship and political interference in the sciences.

The implication of this gag order is that since scientists and experts cannot share information they gather about the climate and the environment to the public, then the Trump administration can get away with their insistence that global warming is not real and successfully trample efforts being made to preserve the environment in favor of building more factories for big companies.

 

via Giphy

But here’s the silver lining in this terribly concerning news: there are US government employees actively defying Trump’s gag order. It started when an anonymous employee of the Badlands National Park tweeted 4 facts about climate change after Trump ordered a ban on all Twitter activity on National Parks Service accounts. The ban was put in place after several agencies tweeted pictures comparing the massive crowd from Obama’s inauguration to that of Trump’s relatively sparse audience. Here’s what that looks like, by the way:

 

 

via https://wapo.st/2jTCQe8

The tweet has been deleted, but thousands of people saw and retweeted it before it was taken down, praising the anonymous employee for their bravery:

https://twitter.com/AthertonKD/status/824021109515259904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

These tweets were followed by creations of ‘alt’ Twitter accounts @AltNatParkSer,  @altUSEPA, and most recently, @RogueNASA. All three accounts are defined as the “unofficial ‘Resistance’ team” of those agencies and urged people to follow them for “real news, real facts”. They are free to denounce Trump’s ban because they are not affiliated with the federal government, unlike the official accounts of the agencies. The handlers of Rogue Nasa explain the reason they created the account in their tweets:

 

They even shut down a Trump supporter that labeled them as fake news:

All three accounts post facts about climate change in an effort to resist the present administration.

It is implied in their tweets that the accounts are handled by government employees, but they don’t intend to reveal their identities:

 

The three accounts are already followed by thousands of people who expressed their support to the people behind it:

https://twitter.com/YasmineGalenorn/status/824093942035533824

 

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