An “unsettled” workforce at the Department of Energy (DOE) has the backing of their leadership, which rejected a request from President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team to identify staffers who worked on climate change issues.
It is believed that the incoming Trump administration is preparing a purge of department scientists who helped forge the Paris Climate Agreement and studied the impacts of carbon pollution. Last week, transition officials sent a questionnaire to the department asking for the names of employees and contractors that worked on certain aspects of climate change policy.
According to the Washington Post on Tuesday, the department is refusing to comply with that request.
“We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team,” DOE spokesperson Eben Bernham-Snyder said in an email. He noted that the Trump camp’s questions had “left many in our workforce unsettled.”
“We are going to respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of our employees at our labs and across our department,” Burnham-Snyder added.
Trump has clearly stated his intentions to wipe clean President Obama’s initiatives toward reducing global temperatures. On the campaign trail, he pledged to freeze all new environmental regulations, including canning the Clean Power Plant—the lynchpin keeping the US bound to the Paris Climate Agreement.
While most department staffers have civil service protections that shield them from unjust firing, they could still, however, be subject to other forms of retaliation such as reassignments or promotion denials.
There are also indications that the President-elect is exploring ways to more easily terminate federal government workers.
Back in July, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who was leading the Trump’s transition operations, told Republican donors during a meeting in Cleveland that the candidate was preparing a purge list of government workers.
“[T]he campaign was drawing up a list of federal government employees to fire if Trump defeats Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election,” Reuters reported.
According to audio obtained by the wire service, Christie told donors, “As you know from his other career, Donald likes to fire people.”
Christie then admitted he was exploring ways to change the law to make it easier to terminate civil servants.
“One of the things I have suggested to Donald is that we have to immediately ask the Republican Congress to change the civil service laws,” he said. “Because if they do, it will make it a lot easier to fire those people.”
Democratic lawmakers were shocked by the Trump transition’s inquiry with the DOE.
“This looks like a scare tactic to intimidate federal employees who are simply doing their jobs and following the facts,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee.
“I am sure there are a lot of career scientists and others who see this as a terrible message of fear and intimidation—‘either ignore the science or we will come after you,’” he added.
