This has all the makings of “an illegal modern-day political witch hunt.”
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has asked the Department of Energy to compile a list of all the employees and contractors who worked on a number of different initiatives related to climate change, sparking fears of witch hunts and drawing parallels to McCarthyism.
The request, a copy of which was first obtained by Bloomberg, specifically seeks the names of those who attended climate change meetings at the United Nations in the past five years and the names of Obama administration staffers who helped set a metric for calculating the social cost of carbon.
Unnamed employees at the DOE told The Washington Post that it seemed as if the Trump transition team was intentionally singling out individuals.
“It’s certainly alarming that they would be targeting specific employees in this way,” Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists told Bloomberg. “Scientists are looking at this with some suspicion, because many of the people who have been chomping at the bit to dismantle federal climate change science programs are now deeply embedded in the transition.”
Neither the Trump team nor the DOE has commented publicly on the questionnaire. Several politicians have voiced their alarm, however.
More: Trump Team Hunts For Names Of Those Involved With Obama’s Climate Change Plan
This is only the beginning. We haven't seen anything yet.
McCarthyism - Wikipedia