National Parks Service ‘goes rogue’ in response to Trump Twitter ban

The Badlands social media hero tweeted in spite of the Trump administration’s earlier Twitter gag order on the entire National Park Service.

As Time notes, the tweets came in the aftermath of a brief suspension of all National Park accounts.

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“Badlands National Park is trolling hard right now by doing something insane like reporting scientific fact”, Jack Jenkins tweeted.

The Science March was an idea born on Reddit, and has its own Facebook page, Twitter account and subreddit.

Tuesday afternoon, a new Twitter account called “AltUSNatParkService” appeared and began tweeting out facts about climate change, support for US national parks, and comments in opposition of President Trump, who has called climate change a hoax created by China.

It’s a known fact that US President Donald Trump does not believe that climate change is a real issue.

The account has quickly gained internet fame, gaining hundreds of thousands of followers in less than 24 hours.

On Tuesday afternoon an anonymous employee at the Badlands National Park bravely defied U.S. President Donald Trump’s widespread censorship order banning federal communications concerning global warming, by sending out four tweets about climate change. A spokesperson for the agency told Buzzfeed that the halt pertained to “informational products like news releases and social media content” but not scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals.

This isn’t the first time an account has gone rogue in response to Trump’s administration. They have been particularly upset about the freeze on grants and contracts, and have been sharing information on climate change. Several EPA websites were “updated” by Trump officials to remove links and references to climate programs that were not regulatory, under the logic that they were reflective of policies of the previous administration.

And it hasn’t just been the National Parks.

They are organizing on social media, including the Twitter account @ScienceMarchDC.

But organizers believed they reached their goal of 1 million participants and threatened legal action.

We promise 100 percent that we include environmental scientists and far too much coffee. The individuals behind the account, who claim to be environmental scientists, have been tweeting anti-Trump and pro-Badlands tweets, along with factual climate change information.

“An unauthorized user had an old password in the San Francisco office and went in and started retweeting things that were in violation of their policy”, he said of Saturday’s incident.