dkfielding/iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is circulating a memo ordering federal employees not to communicate with Congress, a demand that Democrats are calling an illegal “gag order.”
“The Trump Administration has issued restrictions at multiple agencies on employee communications including, in some instances, communications with Congress,” Rep. Elijah Cummings wrote in a letter Wednesday to new White House Counsel Donald F.McGahn, II. “These directives appear to violate a host of federal laws.”
Specifically, Cummings’ letter cited a memo circulating in the Department of Health and Human Services from the acting secretary that tells agency division heads that “no correspondence to public officials (e.g. Members of Congress, Governors)…unless specifically authorized by me or my designee, shall be sent between now and February 3…”
The memo is the latest in a growing back-and-forth between Democrats and the new Trump administration over the mechanics of the change in power.
Skirmishes over the use of social media already spawned rogue twitter accounts at NASA and the Department of the Interior, as federal employees objected to what they feared would be a crack-down on discussion about global warming.
Staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency earlier in the week told the Los Angeles Times that their new bosses had ordered a media blackout, quoting one directive as telling them: “Only send out critical messages, as messages can be shared broadly and end up in the press.”
Cummings accused the administration of imposing a widespread ban on agency communication.
White House aides did not immediately respond to request for comment about alleged efforts to block employees from communicating with Congress, broadly, or about the latest in a series of letters from Cummings about the way they are handling the transition. The Associated Press quoted Sean Spicer saying no directives to silence communication from agencies came from the White House.
A call and an email to HHS requesting comment was not immediately returned.
But Cummings, who is the senior Democrat of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, specifically references a memo circulating in the federal health agency that appears aimed at halting any effort to finish work on regulations that began during the prior administration. It is in that context that the acting agency head invokes a prohibition on employees talking with congress.
Cummings and co-signer Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) cites a series of laws meant to protect open communication between federal employees and members of Congress, including one that ties agency funding to the free flow of information.
That provision, Cummings wrote, specifically prohibits agencies from any order that “threatens to prohibit or prevent, any other officer or employee of the Federal Government from having any direct oral or written communication or contact with any Member, committee, or subcommittee of the Congress in connection with any matter…”
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