National Park Service ordered to shut down Twitter account over anti-Trump retweets

In a development that sets a chilling tone for the next four years, The Boston Globe, CNN, and many other news outlets are following Gizmodo’s lead in reporting that yesterday afternoon Trump administration officials ordered the Department of the Interior to shut down the National Park Service Twitter account after the agency retweeted an image and a news story critical of Donald Trump.

The image in question juxtaposes the size of the crowd at yesterday’s inauguration festivities with the crowd at Obama’s 2009 inauguration, and the news story is about the mysterious erasure of references to climate change and LGBT rights from the White House website. Here‘s an image of the retweets, from New York Times reporter Binyamin Appelbaum:

Shortly after the retweet, National Park Service employees received an email informing them that ‘‘All bureaus and the [Interior] department have been directed by incoming administration to shut down Twitter platforms immediately until further notice” and that all scheduled tweets were to be pulled. This morning, the humbled account came back with its tail between its legs and a picture of a buffalo, saying:

[Note: Gizmodo, like The A.V. Club, is owned by Univision Communications.]