Even before his controversial nominee for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt, is confirmed by the Senate, newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump has taken the first step toward pushing a new agenda for the agency. On Jan. 24, his administration asked the EPA to temporarily halt all contracts, grants and interagency agreements pending a review, the journal ProPublica said in a report that was later unofficially confirmed.

The news agency Reuters said it was told the White House sent a letter to the EPA's Office of Administration and Resources Management ordering the funds freeze on Jan. 23, quoting an unnamed agency staff member as saying it meant “basically no money moving anywhere until ‘they’ can take a look."

The funds at stake are said to involve billions of dollars in grants and contracts to support programs around environmental testing, cleanups and research. It was not immediately clear whether the freeze would affect existing projects or only new ones. Myron Ebell, who headed Trump's EPA transition team until the president’s inauguration on Jan. 20, told Reuters the move was related to the new president’s executive order a day earlier, halting all government hiring outside the military.

Ebell said the procedure was “similar to moves in previous president transition periods.” In selecting new staff to run the EPA, Trump has “drawn heavily from the energy industry lobby and pro-drilling think tank” Reuters reported after viewing a list of the newly introduced 10-member team.

Beginning the rollback of environmental protection legislation passed by the Obama administration, Trump also on Jan. 24 signed two executive actions, one advancing construction of the Keystone XL, the other the Dakota Access pipelines. Both projects had initially been favored by the Obama administration before it backed away from amid massive protests.

On the same day as freezing the EPA’s funds, in another move to reverse Obama’s environmental legacy, the news agency Associated Press reported that Trump has banned employees of the agency (EPA) from giving social media updates, issuing press releases or speaking to reporters.

Web-based BuzzFeed reported that the Department of Agriculture has also been slapped with a similar ban, barring employees from distributing information about research papers or posting on Twitter under the agency's name. A day earlier the newspaper Huffington Post said employees of the Department of Health and Human Services had been told not to speak to public officials. New White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, while declining to comment on the reports, told US media it was “natural for a new administration to reconsider agency operations.”