EPA Intern Directed Not to Tweet About Climate Change

EPA Intern Directed Not to Tweet About Climate Change

On January 3, 2018, the Washington Post published an article by Katie Miller, a University of Maryland student who interned at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in summer 2017. Ms. Miller reported being asked to draft tweets that EPA could post on holidays such Valentines Day and Halloween. She was told by a co-worker not to mention “climate change” or “going green,” but instead write about “conserving energy” or “saving money.” According to Ms. Miller, “[i]t wasn’t clear whether this instruction had come from above or whether [the communications] group merely anticipated opposition to those concepts.”