The Trump Administration Banned 7 Words at the CDC
We've gotten pretty good at accepting democracy-undermining tactics like voter suppression and the president's blatant nepotism as just some of the many terrifying aspects of being American in the year of our beelzebub 2017. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that government censorship would be next on the list.
The Washington Post reports that on Thursday, analysts at the Center for Disease Control were presented with a list of words that they’re not allowed to use in any official documents pertaining to the organization’s 2018 budget. The words? “Diversity,” “entitlement,” “evidence-based,” “fetus,” “science-based,” “transgender,” and “vulnerable.”
In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of “science-based” or “evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered.
The Trump administration - which is pretty much only cool with straight, evangelical Christian white guys - has carved out a particular enmity for transgender folks. From removing LGBT content from federal websites pretty much immediately after taking office, to embarking on a pointlessly hateful and blatantly unconstitutional attempt at banning trans people from serving in the military, Trump has always managed to find time in his busy schedule of bigotry to single out sexual minorities. This latest attack is one of the most dangerous of all, as being forbidden to use the word "transgender" in budget documents seems to be a pretty transparent attempt to prevent the CDC from directing funds towards trans health initiatives. So yeah, welcome to our scary neofascist nation.
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