The Interior Department ordered a temporary halt to all of its Twitter activity last week, following two retweets that appeared to contain digs at Donald Trump. | Getty DOT reins in social media postings after Interior blackout The move came amid heightened attention to federal agency tweets that could be seen as digs at President Donald Trump.

The Department of Transportation has become the second federal agency to tap the brakes on its social media postings since the dawn of Donald Trump’s presidency.

A department source told POLITICO early Monday that employees were told not to publish news releases or engage on DOT’s social media accounts. A department spokesperson later called it a recommendation, saying a career employee had suggested to DOT's agencies that they refrain from issuing news releases or posting to social media until more guidance comes down from the new administration.


The action came just three days after the Interior Department ordered a temporary halt to all of its Twitter activity, following two retweets from the National Park Service that appeared to contain digs at Trump.

DOT's move was not a "ban" on using social media, a spokesperson said later Monday. Indeed, its National Highway Traffic Safety Administration continued to send out safety-related tweets, with posts on distracted driving and recalls.

"There was no request for a ban to be placed on social media at the Department of Transportation, as the Department would never thwart the agencies' ability to reach the widest possible audience where health and safety are concerned," the spokesperson said, disputing POLITICO's initial account.

A DOT source said the move didn’t appear to be in response to any controversial postings.

However, the action came as critics of the new, Twitter-enthusiast president were eagerly looking for possible anti-Trump subtext in tweets from federal agencies. Earlier Monday, Democrats and some news outlets had speculated that the Defense Department might have been subtly referring to Trump in a tweet cautioning that “social media postings sometimes provide an important window into a person’s #mentalhealth.”

The Defense Department's tweet had no hidden agenda, Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said afterward.

“This was a tweet to promote a DoD Live blog posting about suicide prevention, as a follow-up to an Army Symposium on Suicide Prevention that took place last week," Davis said. "There was no other intended message other than to draw attention to the extremely important issue of suicide prevention and awareness among our troops.”

Interior ordered its agencies to shut down their Twitter activities Friday night after the park service had shared tweets showing that the crowds at Trump's inauguration were thinner than the record turnout at former President Barack Obama’s 2009 swearing-in. The park service also repeated a tweet noting the removal of climate change, civil rights and health-care topics from the White House website, The Washington Post reported.

The park service later deleted the offending tweets, and posted an apology Saturday. “We regret the mistaken RTs from our account yesterday and look forward to continuing to share the beauty and history of our parks with you,” the agency wrote.

In the meantime, though, Interior’s Twitter ban made it harder for some parts of the sprawling department to convey safety information to the public. For example, Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state had to post this on its Twitter account Friday night: “Until further notice, all park road condition updates will [be] provided on the Mount Rainier Facebook page."

Jeremy Herb contributed to this report.