The Trump administration is prohibiting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from using seven words or phrases in official budget documents, the Washington Post reported Friday.
And liberals are outraged.
What happened?
According to the Post, CDC analysts were given the list of prohibited terms at a meeting with senior agency officials in Atlanta on Thursday. The list includes:
- transgender
- fetus
- diversity
- entitlement
- vulnerable
- evidence-based
- science-based
It isn’t immediately clear why those words and phrases are being scrubbed, nor if the administration will add additional words to the list.
The language-ban is related to "budget and supporting materials” that will be given to Congress and the CDC’s partners, the Post reported. President Donald Trump is expected to release his budget for fiscal year 2019 sometime next February.
The Office of Management and Budget has jurisdiction over budget proposals, including the language agencies use. A spokesperson for the OMB did not return a request for comment from the Post.
How did people respond?
Michiko Kakutani, the former chief book critic at the New York Times, called the move “Orwellian”:
James Martin, a progressive Catholic priest, concurred with Katutani:
Chris Lu, the deputy Labor secretary in the Obama administration, likened the move to something that happens in Russia or China, not the U.S.:
Actress Aisha Tyler called the move censorship:
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof called the decision "crazy":
"The Daily Show" writer Lizz Winstead responded by calling Charmaine Yoest, the woman Trump nominated to be assistant HHS secretary for public affairs, an "extremist":
A Twitter feed for "The Resistance" called the move another decision by Trump to make America stupid:
