Trump’s science envoy resigns with a coded acrostic: I-M-P-E-A-C-H

A US government science envoy has resigned over what he called President Donald Trump’s “attacks on the core values of the United States.”

Citing Trump's failure to condemn white supremacists in the wake of the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the administration’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, Daniel Kammen, an energy researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, posted his resignation letter on his Twitter on Wednesday.

Hidden in his letter was a coded message: he spelled out "I-M-P-E-A-C-H" with the first letters of each paragraph. The White House and the state department did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the letter.

"Your failure to condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis has domestic and international ramifications," he wrote. "Particularly troubling to me is how your response to Charlottesville is consistent with a broader pattern of behavior that enables sexism and racism and disregards the welfare of all Americans, the global community, and the planet," added Kammen, whose term as an envoy was set to end next month.

“Your presence in the White House harms the United States domestically and abroad and threatens life on this planet,” he wrote.

Former president Barack Obama created the science envoy program in 2010 to establish and develop energy programs in countries around the world and to boost outreach and partnerships with predominantly Muslim countries. Kammen, one of 18 scientists who have participated in the program, specifically focused on renewable energy development in the Middle East and North Africa. 

Andrew Rosenberg, who heads the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says Kammen’s letter highlights the moral and ethical quandaries that Trump's policies have created for scientists who serve the US government.

“For the science envoys like Dan, where you are going and representing the United States, it’s particularly difficult,” Rosenberg says. “It’s a personal struggle that everyone has to go through.”

Kammen's departure is the most recent in a wave of resignations from various parts of the federal government after Trump's response to Charlottesville.

Earlier in August, members of the President's Committee on Arts and Humanities, including actor Kal Penn and writer Jhumpa Lahiri, resigned en masse in a letter that spelled "R-E-S-I-S-T" with the first letter of each paragraph.

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