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6: EPA speakers

A particular sentence I found interesting from chapter 8 is on page 254, "Although legal scholars disagree about precisely what the Founding Fathers believed about freedom of expression, there is little if any disagreement that many problems the nation faces today are more threatening than those that existed in the late eighteenth century," (Tedford and Herbeck 254). The "problems the nation faces today" part immediately made me think of an extremely recent event involving climate change.  The Environmental Protection Agency canceled the speaking appearance of three agency scientists who were scheduled to discuss climate change at a conference on Monday in Rhode Island (New York Times). The conference's goal was to draw attention the largest estuary in New England, Narragansett Bay, and scientists were going to unveil the state of the bay there. The article detailing this cancellation found no clear explanation for this cancellation other than that "it was the decision of the E.P.A. Office of Public Affairs" (New York Times). 
An interesting part of this story is that the scientists were still allowed to attend the event, they just couldn't speak. Isn't restricting this speech prior restraint? Climate change affects the nation and threatens our well-being, so doesn't a government agency restricting talk of it threaten our national security? The agents restricted from speaking were from the EPA, so technically restricting its employees, which would be allowed in the private sector. But since they are a government agency does the infringe on freedom of speech? I think these questions are interesting, especially because the issue affects the entire population.

Sources:
Friedman, Lisa. “E.P.A. Cancels Talk on Climate Change by Agency Scientists.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 Oct. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/10/22/climate/epa-scientists.html.

Tedford, Thomas L., and Dale A. Herbeck. Freedom of Speech in the United States. 8th ed. Strata Publishing, INC., 2017.

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