If you live near an ocean, now may be the time to put your house on stilts. FEMA has a guide. One government group that apparently won't be much help in the days and years to come, however, is the Environmental Protection Agency. Under the stewardship of President Trump, the floodgates of the climate crisis will swing open to boost economic growth and ensure that the salty water of the Atlantic and Pacific will come running down our city streets sooner than ever.

It's been a rough week for the agency. We are rapidly approaching the Senate confirmation of Scott Pruitt, a man who has filed or joined more than two dozen lawsuits against the EPA. He'll soon lead it. Pruitt has pledged not to recuse himself from those cases, meaning, as Esquire's Charles P. Pierce put it, "Scott Pruitt can negotiate a settlement between Scott Pruitt and Scott Pruitt." Since those lawsuits are targeting regulations on carbon emissions, water pollution, and how much mercury and arsenic power plants can emit—among plenty of others—we can safely assume Pruitt will set out to Make the World a Better Place if he is confirmed.

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Meanwhile, the EPA is already showing off its new way of doing things before Pruitt takes the reins. Both ProPublica and The Huffington Post report that the agency has frozen all its grant programs. The grants provide funding for "research, redevelopment of former industrial sites, air quality monitoring and education, among other things," according to HuffPost, and nixing them could, in the assessment of ProPublica, "affect a significant part of the agency's budget allocations and even threaten to disrupt core operations ranging from toxic cleanups to water quality testing." Sweet.

This also has immediate consequences for the men and women who provide these services thanks to EPA grants:

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"This is the emergency we were all worried about." —@JacquelynGill pic.twitter.com/qd9ESpcviy — Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 24, 2017

In a sign that this is all part of Draining The Swamp (not literally—there's no money for that), EPA workers have been told to keep all of this under wraps. By "all of this," we mean all information about everything the EPA does and does not do under this administration. HuffPost got hold of the memo, which it claims "seems to cover the current agency guidance on talking to the press in general, not just about the directive on grants."

Here's the memo:

I just returned from a briefing for Communication Directors where the following information was provided. These restrictions are effective immediately and will remain in place until further direction is received from the new Administration's Beach Team. Please review this material and share with all appropriate individuals in your organization. If anyone on your staff receives a press inquiry of any kind, it must be referred to me so I can coordinate with the appropriate individuals in OPA.

No press releases will be going out to external audiences.

No social media will be going out. A Digital Strategist will be coming on board to oversee social media. Existing, individually controlled, social media accounts may become more centrally controlled.

No blog messages.

The Beach Team will review the list of upcoming webinars and decide which ones will go forward.

Please send me a list of any external speaking engagements that are currently scheduled among any of your staff from today through February.

Incoming media requests will be carefully screened.

No new content can be placed on any website. Only do clean up where essential.

List servers will be reviewed. Only send out critical messages, as messages can be shared broadly and end up in the press.

Transparency! Power to the people! Swamp Drainage!

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(We're told "The Beach Team" references "staffers for the new administration working at the various agencies while new leadership is put in place," and does not include Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.)

The grant program freeze was confirmed to ProPublica by Myron Ebell, who Trump tapped to be his EPA transition chief. Ebell is one of the world's foremost climate change deniers, a reprehensible honor that only seems to have curried favor with the current administration. Historians will puzzle over this, assuming we make it that far.

Meanwhile, President Trump advanced the cause of two massive pipeline projects today. First was the Dakota Access Pipeline, which grassroots activists helped defeat, temporarily, with on-the-ground protests this summer. Second was the Keystone XL Pipeline, the zombie project that is back despite its many political deaths. Keystone's masterminds have always planned to use foreign steel, transport foreign oil, and create remarkably few jobs on American soil. It was also declared two years ago, by CNBC and many others' assessments, to no longer be economically viable. And yet, it rises again.

Looks like the EPA, and the planet, are in good hands going forward. Perhaps this is a good time for a reminder that the agency was created by Richard Nixon, that tree-hugging commie.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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