The Energy Department has rejected a request from Donald Trump’s transition teams to provide the names of all agency employees and contractors who worked on climate change policy under President Obama. The Trump team request sparked understandable alarm among agency workers, who suspected that the new regime was planning a purge.
The transition team request came in the form of a questionnaire, as Politico was first to report. It asked for a list of DOE workers who had attended UN conferences on climate change in the last five years, as well as anyone who attended group meetings on the “social cost of carbon.”
The Washington Post reports that in an email, a department spokesperson told the newspaper they would absolutely not be providing that information:
“The Department of Energy received significant feedback from our workforce throughout the department, including the National Labs, following the release of the transition team’s questions. Some of the questions asked left many in our workforce unsettled,” said Eben Burnham-Snyder, a department spokesman. “Our career workforce, including our contractors and employees at our labs, comprise the backbone of DOE (Department of Energy) and the important work our department does to benefit the American people. We are going to respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of our employees at our labs and across our department.
“We will be forthcoming with all publically-available information with the transition team. We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team.” Burnham-Snyder’s email had the last sentence in boldface for emphasis.
Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told the Washington Post that the questionnaire looked like “a scare tactic to intimidate federal employees who are simply doing their jobs and following the facts.”
It’s unclear whether Trump or his team will retaliate in some way for not getting what they wanted (a handy roadmap to purge federal employees because of their political beliefs). It’s also not clear what will become of the DOE once its headed by an execution-loving dancing show loser who once said he’d like to abolish it, but that’s a nightmare for another day.