The US Interior Department reactivated its official Twitter accounts after coming under fire for retweeting posts on Friday that could be seen as critical to President Donald Trump.
The department’s National Park Service apologized for the retweets in a post Saturday.
“We regret the mistaken RTS,” the National Park Service said.
A spokesman for the National Park Service told the Washington Post in an email that the retweeting was “inconsistent with the agency’s approach to engaging the public through social media.”
“The Department of Interior’s communications team determined that it was important to stand down Twitter activity across the Department temporarily, except in the case of public safety,” Thomas Crosson, the spokesman, said in an email.
The first retweet linked to an Esquire article pointing out that the official White House website had removed policy pages on climate change, civil rights and health care. The second retweet was a side-by-side photo comparison of the size of Trump’s inauguration crowd compared to Obama’s inauguration crowd in 2009 that had been originally tweeted by a New York Times reporter. The National Park Service does not release official crowd estimates for permitted events.
Both retweets were removed from the National Park Service’s Twitter account and the agency announced to employees that they were temporarily suspended for the most part from posting to the main Twitter account.
According to the Washington Post, an email was sent out Friday that directed all bureaus and the department to shut down Twitter platforms “immediately upon further notice.”
The email urging the shutdown was sent by an Interior Department career official, not a new White House staffer or someone from the Trump transition team, according to an Interior Department official.
“Out of an abundance of caution, while we investigated the situation involving these tweets, the Department’s communications team determined that it was important to stand down Twitter activity across the Department temporarily, except in the case of public safety,” the statement from an Interior Department official said.
The statement confirmed that the various Twitter accounts for its 10 bureaus will resume as normal.
“Now that social media guidance has been clarified, the Department and its bureaus should resume Twitter engagement as normal this weekend,” the statement read. “With the exception of social media posts on the Secretary’s policy priorities, which will be outlined upon confirmation.”
Trump’s nominee for interior secretary, Rep. Ryan Zinke, will testify in his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
ABC News
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