Whitewashing Words

This piece first appeared on Jerry Lanson’s Substack: “From the Grass Roots.”

      Recent news coverage has focused on the chaotic decisions of the Trump Administration. Tariffs imposed on Mexico and Canada, then paused for four weeks, then threatened again a day later. Federal workers fired in droves, given hours to clean out their desks, then asked in some cases to come back. Comedic portrayals of Elon Musk, wild-eyed, wielding a chain saw in preparation for obliterating yet another federal agency.

      Beneath the surface of this helter-skelter story line, however, lies a far darker, sustained and relentless rush by Donald Trump to exact revenge, purge opponents, silence critics, and impose authoritarian controls. He’s replaced multiple levels of the FBI hierarchy, the military and the Justice Department; deserted allies; threatened the news media; stripped $400 million in funding from a single university; silenced his own party, and divided Democrats.

      Nothing, however, is more sinister than the administration’s systematic and spreading efforts to whitewash words and phrases off websites, documents and other federal communication. It’s an effort that goes far beyond Trump’s stated distaste for what he deems “woke” or his unrelenting attack on “DEI” and transgender individuals. And it appears to be a plan plucked directly from the pages of Project 2025, the far-right agenda laid out by the Heritage Foundation well before the election.

      Last October, Pen America, a nonprofit organization that advocates for free expression, warned that “there is no act of censorship that is more explicit than literally banning words.” It noted that Project 2025 proposed to do just that: “prohibiting the use of terms and concepts that its authors find ideologically objectionable and deleting them from every government document where they are already used.”

      That process appears to be well underway. The New York Times review of government memos, “official and unofficial agency guidance,” and 5,000 web pages found that in the Trump Administration “agencies have flagged hundreds of words to limit or avoid.”

      One is the word “women,” a description – or deletion – that covers more than half the country’s adult population.

      The Times article provided a list of 199 words or phrases flagged or removed by agencies. Taken together, they describe nearly the entire U.S. population besides straight, white, American-born males. Words to be expunged or treated with caution include: “female, black, minority, Native American, LGBT, immigrants, and race.” All are central to American discussion and dialogue… Or they were.

      It is as if George Orwell’s “thought police” from his novel 1984, have swooped into positions throughout the government.

      The administration also appears to be moving to eliminate discussion about or even acknowledgement of the fact that “discrimination” exists in America. That word, too, is on the list. So are related words like “bias, hate speech, prejudice, racial justice, social justice and segregation.” Even the words, “disabled, disability and victim” have been flagged, The Times reports.

      History is often shaped by the words published by government s and catalogued in federal archives. Eliminating words and phrases that describe who we and our neighbors are, what our differences are, and how we communicate them undermines understanding and knowledge. More ominously, however, these words and deletions may yet be used as a basis for eliminating federal support for whole segments and topics of our society: Those with special needs, for example, or those conducting essential federal research in certain areas of health and science (“climate change, environmental quality and mental health” are on the list, too).

      I’m curious.Are Musk’s techies using AI to scan all federal research proposals for such language? Will it throw out research proposals simply for including these words?

      Notes The Times, “the president and some of his closest advisers, including Elon Musk, have frequently portrayed themselves as champions of free speech …. But the pattern of vanishing words .. suggests Mr. Trump and his administration may be more interested in chilling the national conversation.”

      Chilling the conversation – or attempting to end it.

      The Times wrote that its list likely is incomplete. It also noted that while some words had been ordered removed from “public-facing websites,” others had been ordered eliminated from “materials (including school curricula) in which they might be included.” Still others were merely discouraged or flagged in grant-proposal reviews.

      The lion’s share of all research relies to some degree on federal grants. And as these lists proliferate, research on everything from climate change to mental health may be in jeopardy.

      So too might support for families with kids dealing with disabilities, communities trying to work together across differences, and an entire world threatened by rapidly climbing temperatures, more frequent and severe storms, and rising seas.

      Nor is the administration satisfied with limiting itself to deleting words. On Monday, the city of Washington D.C., facing the threat of losing federal funding, will paint over a $4-million Black Lives Matter mural painted after the national outcry over George Floyd’s death in 2020.

      I wonder. Will this, too, be met with resounding silence?