Government employees are supposed to do their jobs based on the law and the facts. They aren’t supposed to bend to the whims of politics, although they are often required to follow the directions of the executive.

Executive Order on KXL.

Sec. 2. Invitation to Submit an Application. I hereby invite TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, L.P. (TransCanada), to promptly re-submit its application to the Department of State for a Presidential permit for the construction and operation of the Keystone XL Pipeline, a major pipeline for the importation of petroleum from Canada to the United States. Sec. 3. Directives. (a) Department of State. The Secretary of State shall, if the application referred to in section 2 is submitted, receive the application and take all actions necessary and appropriate to facilitate its expeditious review. With respect to that review, I hereby direct as follows: (i) The Secretary of State shall reach a final permitting determination, including a final decision as to any conditions on issuance of the permit that are necessary or appropriate to serve the national interest, within 60 days of TransCanada's submission of the permit application.

This is Secretary Kerry’s statement on his KXL determination.

Executive Order 13337 delegates to the Secretary of State the President’s authority to issue or deny Presidential Permits like the one sought for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. In reaching my decision, I evaluated information provided by TransCanada, the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, the views of other federal agencies, and nearly five million public comments. I based this decision on key findings by the State Department, notably: The proposed project has a negligible impact on our energy security.

The proposed project would not lead to lower gas prices for American consumers.

The proposed project’s long-term contribution to our economy would be marginal.

The proposed project raises a range of concerns about the impact on local communities, water supplies, and cultural heritage sites.

The proposed project would facilitate transportation into our country of a particularly dirty source of fuel. The critical factor in my determination was this: moving forward with this project would significantly undermine our ability to continue leading the world in combatting climate change.

All the above will still be true following Trump’s executive order, there will only be a few thousand jobs — mostly in food services to construction workers — for 2 years. There would only be about a couple dozen permanent jobs once the construction is done. The oil this pipeline would provide would add to the global market and wouldn’t lower U.S. oil prices — which are already pretty low — and if tar sands oil spills it can’t be cleaned up. The Tar Sands spill in the Kalamazoo River five years ago still hasn’t been cleaned.

Five years ago today, in the middle of the night, an oil pipeline operated by Enbridge ruptured outside of Marshall, Michigan. It took more than 17 hours before the Canadian company finally cut off the flow, but by then, more than a million gallons of tar sands crude had oozed into Talmadge Creek. The oil quickly flowed into the Kalamazoo River, forcing dozens of families to evacuate their homes. Oil spills of that magnitude are always disastrous, but the Kalamazoo event was historically damaging. The first challenge was the composition of the oil. Fresh tar sands crude looks more like dirt than conventional crude—it’s far too thick to travel through a pipeline. To get this crumbly mess to flow, producers thin it out with the liquid constituents of natural gas. Diluted bitumen, or dilbit, as it’s called in the tar sands industry, is approximately three parts tar sands crude, one part natural gas liquids. When dilbit gushed into Talmadge Creek in 2010, the mixture broke apart. The volatile natural gas liquids vaporized and wafted into the surrounding neighborhoods. The airborne chemicals were so difficult to find and eliminate that Enbridge decided it would be better to simply buy some of the homes that were evacuated, preventing the residents from ever returning.

So that’s bad, really really bad. Certainly incoming Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is likely to ignore all these facts, but he also needs to get his rank and file staff — who are remaining in their positions — to generate documents that are the exact opposite of what they just produced a little over a year ago. That’s rather awkward.

Executive Order on DAPL

Sec. 2. Directives. (a) Pipeline Approval Review. The Secretary of the Army shall instruct the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), including the Commanding General and Chief of Engineers, to take all actions necessary and appropriate to: ,,, (ii) consider, to the extent permitted by law and as warranted, whether to rescind or modify the memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works dated December 4, 2016 (Proposed Dakota Access Pipeline Crossing at Lake Oahe, North Dakota), and whether to withdraw the Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement in Connection with Dakota Access, LLC's Request for an Easement to Cross Lake Oahe, North Dakota, dated January 18, 2017, and published at 82 Fed. Reg. 5543; (iii) consider, to the extent permitted by law and as warranted, prior reviews and determinations, including the Environmental Assessment issued in July of 2016 for the DAPL, as satisfying all applicable requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq., and any other provision of law that requires executive agency consultation or review (including the consultation or review required under section 7(a) of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, 16 U.S.C. 1536(a));

In point of fact the Army engineer actually approved the pipeline, it was a civilian assistant secretary that overruled them and didn’t just recommend that the project be cancelled, but rather said they needed more time to study having it moved to a different location.

A civilian leader in the Army made the decision to deny an easement to the controversial Dakota Access oil pipeline despite Army Corps of Engineers recommendations that it be granted, according to officials and a document. Because of the pipeline's size — 30 inches in diameter — its approval went to Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Jo-Ellen Darcy, an official said. "Ms. Darcy had the authority to make the decision on behalf of the Department of the Army, and she did so," Darcy spokesperson Moira Kelley told NBC News Tuesday evening. ... Darcy said in the memo that more work needs to be done in looking for an alternate route, with greater participation from the tribe.

Now of course Trump can appoint a new assistance secretary, where as of now he hasn’t bothered to yet and still has about 4,000 appointments to make, it’s going to take him quite some time to get around to this one. This is not a done deal.

It’s going to take some time for either of these to happen, particular since the KXL EO says that SecState Tillerson is to make his determination within “60 days” of Trans Canada resubmitting their application when it took several years the first time and, again, he’s doesn’t have any Assistance Secretary positions even appointed yet at State.

And if these planned reversals under Trump are implemented purely for political purpose not because of the facts on the ground or because there’s any other legitimate reason for the Army Corp or State to decide differently than they previously did, wouldn’t that also violate the law?

The Hatch Act of 1939, officially An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, is a United States federal law whose main provision prohibits employees in the executive branch of the federal government, except the president, vice-president, and certain designated high-level officials of that branch,[1] from engaging in some forms of political activity.

Normally this would mean someone in the government campaigning for a particular party, candidate or political issue as part of their official government position. For example a former Bush ethics lawyer has filed complaints against FBI Director Comey under the Hatch Act.

The former chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush White House (but now Hillary Clintonsupporter) has filed an ethics complaint against FBI Director James Comey over the letter he sent to lawmakers on Friday. Richard Painter worked in the White House Counsel’s office between 2005 and 2007, serving as the chief ethics lawyer for then-President Bush 43. On Sunday, Painter penned an op-ed in The New York Times explaining his decision to file an ethics complaint against the FBI Director. “The F.B.I.’s job is to investigate, not to influence the outcome of an election,” Painter wrote in the op-ed. “And that is why, on Saturday, I filed a complaint against the F.B.I. with the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates Hatch Act violations, and with the Office of Government Ethics.”

So there’s that.

What’s even more worrying is Trump’s gag orders on Government Scientists including the EPA, HHS, Department of Transportation and National Park Service.

Less than a week after the inauguration, the Trump administration has already gagged employees at two federal agencies. Memos obtained by various media outlets show that scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture are now blocked from communicating with the public and the press. At the EPA, whose grants and contract budget have also been frozen, employees are not allowed to talk about this change to reporters or on social media. The EPA is responsible for passing and upholding regulations on issues such as clean air and water and the carbon emissions responsible for global warming. The nominee for EPA head, Scott Pruitt, has made a career out of suing the EPA and trying to weaken its environmental regulations. Scientists at the research division of the US Department of Agriculture are no longer allowed to communicate with the public about taxpayer-funded research. In general, the USDA is less politically sensitive than the EPA, though it does do some research into genetically modified food and pesticides. That said, it has used research money to investigate how to cut down methane, a greenhouse gas that is a major cause of climate change

Trump has also order the EPA to take down it’s climate change page which, as I type this, they haven’t done. That page includes a detailed report on the impact of climate change on human health.

With climate change, the frequency, severity, duration, and location of weather and climate phenomena—like rising temperatures, heavy rains and droughts, and some other kinds of severe weather—are changing. This means that areas already experiencing health-threatening weather and climate phenomena, such as severe heat or hurricanes, are likely to experience worsening impacts, such as higher temperatures and increased storm intensity, rainfall rates, and storm surge. It also means that some locations will experience new climate-related health threats. For example, areas previously unaffected by toxic algal blooms or waterborne diseases because of cooler water temperatures may face these hazards in the future as increasing water temperatures allow the organisms that cause these health risks to thrive. Even areas that currently experience these health threats may see a shift in the timing of the seasons that pose the greatest risk to human health. Climate change can therefore affect human health in two main ways: first, by changing the severity or frequency of health problems that are already affected by climate or weather factors; and second, by creating unprecedented or unanticipated health problems or health threats in places where they have not previously occurred.

This is just a quick sampling of what the freeze has stopped in it’s tracks.

So the lead paint in the Bay Area, the molasses spill in Honolulu and the engines and pesticides problem in Southern California — are not going to be resolved. At least not right now. EPA manages thousands of grants around the nation that both sample and test for environmental contamination, but also handles cleanups like the $100 Million that was approved for the lead in the Flint Michigan water system.

WASHINGTON — Michigan’s U.S. senators and a key congressman want to know if a reported freeze on all new Environmental Protection Agency grants and contracts under the Trump administration will impact $100 million approved late last year to help Flint in the wake of its water crisis. ,,, At Tuesday’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said he had seen the reports but did not know if they were true and was looking into it. Meanwhile, media contacts at the EPA did not respond to questions from the Free Press about whether the reported freeze could impact efforts in Flint, where high lead levels were detected after the city switched water sources in 2014 and an emergency declaration was issued last year.

But the EPA can’t answer that question, they’ve been gagged. As has the Department of Agriculture, and the Nation institutes of Health.

And it just so happens that the National Institute of Health has just started testing a Zika vaccine.

The first of five early stage clinical trials to test the safety and ability of an investigational Zika vaccine candidate called the Zika Purified Inactivated Virus (ZPIV) vaccine to generate an immune system response has begun at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) Clinical Trial Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. Scientists with WRAIR, part of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), developed the vaccine. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is co-funding the Phase 1 clinical trial with WRAIR, serving as the regulatory sponsor and providing other support.

We don’t yet know what the ultimate result of these freezes and gag orders may be particular if their happens to be a food safety or health issue that occurs while these organization are prohibited from informing the public about these hazards, because they can’t. talk. to. the. press.

Well, they couldn’t talk to the press until today because the gag order on the USDA has been lifted due to the public outcry.

That didn't last long. Less than a day after the US Department of Agriculture issued an internal memo dictating that its main research division "not release any public-facing documents" the agency has rescinded that order, according to emails obtained by Buzzfeed. Under the rule, those public-facing documents would have included "news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content." This gag order operated in the same vein as Trump's attempts to silence the EPA, National Park Service and Department of Transportation and Department of Health and Human Services. However, after a day of strident and vocal backlash against the rule from both the scientific community and American public, the department relented.

Apparently if you apply enough pressure at the right point you can get Trump to flinch.

Maybe we can just keep talking about how he lost the popular vote and slowly drive him up the wall, but something tells me it’s going to take more than that. Much more.