Serving as a science adviser in the Trump administration can’t be a fun gig. The president is known to swat away facts and truths like so many pesky flies to serve his agenda and ego. So it should come as little surprise that the Department of State’s Science Envoy, Daniel Kammen, chose to walk away from his role in somewhat dramatic fashion.
In his resignation letter, Kammen followed the lead of the President’s Council on the Arts and Humanities, offering up a not-so-subtle acrostic offering up a popular sentiment these days.
The first letter of every paragraph in Kammen’s missive spells “IMPEACH.”
The damning and outspoken letter predicates Kammen’s decision on Trump’s “attacks on core values of the United States” and his exhibition of a “broader pattern of behavior that enables sexism and racism” stemming from the president’s controversial response to the Charlottesville violence.
According to Gizmodo, a White House spokesperson says that Kammen was appointed by the Obama administration, and his one-year term was set to expire in September.
Kammen still has his day job running the Renewable and Applied Energy Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley, where he no doubt commiserates with individuals whose actions are more governed by thought, logic, and deductive reasoning. His Twitter feed shows him to be politically and socially active, having participated in the Science March and seemingly taking a number of positions that would put him at odds with the current administration’s policies.
For those unfamiliar with the emergent trend of high profile resignations bearing secret acrostic messages, here is the aforementioned PCAH resignation letter as tweeted by actor and council member Kal Penn:
RESIST. IMPEACH. Any guesses as to what message the next letter will bear under the thinnest of veils?
