The Trump administration has issued a gag order prohibiting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from using certain words in their documents for the 2019 budget.
The words included in the order are “fetus”, “entitlement”, “diversity”, “transgender”, “vulnerable”, “evidence-based” and “science-based.”
Policy analysts for the CDC were made aware of the forbidden words during a meeting on Thursday. The Trump administration is prohibiting the words from being used in any documents for the budget, as well as in any supporting materials for Congress and CDC partners.
No replacement words or phrases were offered, except in the case of “evidence-based” and “science-based,” for which the administration suggest, “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.”
A “longtime CDC analyst” who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity, stated that it is very likely other parts of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will be directed to operate under the same guidelines regarding the use of these words.
It is unclear how different departments of HHS will handle this since they are working in specific areas that deal with issues related to the banned words. The National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention is working on ways to prevent HIV among transgender people, and the CDC is working on studying birth defects caused by the Zika virus in developing fetuses.
The analyst speaking with the Post also said that they were unable to recall a previous time when words were banned from budget documents because they were considered controversial. According to the analyst, people that attended the meeting where the ban was announced were “incredulous.”
This is just another example of the Trump administration’s attempts to delegitimize the LGBTQ community.
Earlier this year, the HHS stopped counting LGBT in the National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants and the Annual Program Performance Report for the Center for Independent Living.
The administration is also considering the possibility of excluding information about sexuality and gender identity in the U.S. Census.
Furthermore, in their attempt to deny climate change and defund climate science, the Trump administration has gone as far as removing the phrases “climate change” and “global warming” from government websites.
COMMENTS