Trump in No Hurry to Staff ‘Enemy of the People’ Offices

The New York Times on making America late again.

The New York Times (3/12/17) reported that the Trump administration, for a variety of reasons, was filling the offices of administrative agencies at a glacial pace. From the Department of Agriculture to the Weather Service, over 2,000 mid-level political-appointee positions were still unfilled; the Times called it “the slowest transition in decades.”

One place that slowness has showed up clearly is in the staffing of what are variously called Public Affairs offices, Newsrooms or Media Offices of these government departments and agencies—the very offices that reporters in both Washington bureaus and in newsrooms around the country depend on to get routine information about what these departments and agencies are doing, or, in the case of more investigative assignments, to ask basic questions and set up interviews with key personnel.

This reporter stumbled upon the problem earlier in the month while researching a story for High Times magazine on the fate, in the Trump administration, of the now 19-year-old ban on federal student aid for any students who are convicted of even a minor criminal drug violation. In my case, I began by calling the Department of Education’s Press Room. (As of March 17, the website was still listing Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education, though he left a year ahead of Obama, and there was another secretary, John King, before Trump nominee Betsy DeVos took over.)

I reached a receptionist who took down my number, and a couple of days later received a call from a Jim Bradshaw, who asked me to send him a list of questions. I responded quickly with a list of 13, later adding two more, which ranged from policy questions to basic facts, such as how many students had lost aid or been banned from getting aid in 2016 because of a drug conviction, to simple information, such as whether DOE rules required a student to complete an approved drug rehab program, or simply to enroll in one, to have a ban lifted.

Bradshaw said he’d try to get me answers. Telling him my deadline was March 10, I asked him to please get me answers as he obtained them, and not to wait until he had them all, which he agreed to do.

After two weeks of repeated emails and phone messages to Bradshaw, and no answers, he finally emailed this hilarious non-response response:

We checked on your questions about federal student aid and here is what we can tell you. On background, not for quotation by name but attributed to “The US Department of Education” or an “Education Department spokesman”: “The Department does not have any comment at this time.”

Later, recounting this to the press officer for a major Republican senator, I was told:

Well, you know, that guy probably isn’t even actually a press officer. We’ve found that the Trump administration is being pretty slow about filling mid-level appointed positions, like heads of different operations, including public affairs, and that some rooms are just empty desks. It can be hard to get someone. Many people from the last administration have left, and the people who are there don’t know what they can say, and can’t get any guidance. In some cases, the offices are just empty.

This does seem to be the case. A call to the number for the listed press officer for climate change questions from the media at the EPA reached not that press officer, but a receptionist, who said to write the question in an email addressed, not to her listed email, but to press@epa.gov. I said I was on deadline that day with my question; by press time the following week, I had still gotten no response.

The Interior Department—which oversees over 500 million acres of public land, as well as organizations like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management—is worse. There, calling public information just elicits a recording where you can leave a message. After days, still no response. Its website—and this is true for a number of government websites now under the new administration—lists no press office or media office or public affairs office. Press releases provide no contact person to call for further information; just a general email address of interior_press@ios.doi.gov.

Interior Department photo of Secretary Ryan Zinke’s meeting with Blackfoot leaders.

On the Interior Department site’s Media Advisories page on March 17, five events were listed, all for March 10. Two of them—a Blackfoot tribal blessing in honor of Trump Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and an address by Zinke to the Montana legislature—were listed as “open to the press,” while three—a meeting by Zinke with Glacier Park leadership and staff; a Zinke visit to the Bureau of Land Management’s office in Lewistown, Montana; and a second site visit to the BLM regional office for Montana and the Dakotas—were listed as “closed to the press.” This raises the obvious question: Why are these on the “Media Advisories” page at all? As a taunt, perhaps?

The bureau chief of one DC news bureau noted that reporters there were finding some departments less staffed and available than others. Some departments, like Defense, Homeland Security and Justice, have well-staffed press offices listed on their websites, making access easier, but others, like Agriculture and Interior, do not. (Interior got a special thumbs down.)

Meanwhile, the Commerce Department’s website still lists the offices of director of public affairs and press secretary as “vacant.” Commerce, one of the government’s largest departments, oversees the now extremely controversial and, from a news perspective, critically important Office of Economic Analysis, as well as the Census Bureau, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and Economics and Statistics Administration.

The Trump administration’s slow pace at restaffing public affairs/press offices may be just part of the general organizational chaos and infighting reported at the White House, but it could also be part of what is being described as a Trump war against the established (and parts of the alternative) media. The unprecedented barring of major news organizations at White House press briefings, the barring of press from what are nevertheless called media events, the barring of the press from the secretary of State’s plane on international trips, and the president’s reference to the media as an “enemy of the people” certainly suggest that it also may be a case of being in no hurry to open up government to inspection.

One can certainly overstate the importance of press offices and press officers, whose role is often as much or more to obfuscate, hinder, delay and manipulate as it is to assist reporters in getting information on a story, but—particularly for those reporters who work on national stories from outside the Beltway—getting basic information from a government agency or department via an initial call to the department’s public affairs office is an important first step, and usually a big time saver. When it can’t be done because there’s no there there, and time-consuming work-arounds are required, the public is the loser.

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time (Common Courage Press, 2003), an investigative book about the Mumia Abu-Jamal case. He is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an independent online alternative newspaper.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this piece erroneously said that the Interior Department oversees the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA is an independent agency.

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