President Donald Trump’s purge of so-called woke initiatives as one of his first orders of business after returning to the White House in January has already filtered through hundreds of federal government websites, according to a New York Times analysis.
The Times on Friday revealed a list of banned words that came with that order – from phrases like “sense of belonging,” “all-inclusive” and “at risk” – to more innocuous terms like “women,” “institutional,” and “systemic.”
They all landed on Trump’s ban list and while the Times noted the White House’s "rhetorical strategy" has been criticized as discriminatory, it exposes a greater hypocrisy as the president and his closest allies – including tech billionaire Elon Musk – “have frequently portrayed themselves as champions of free speech.”
So much so, that Trump signed a day-one executive order titled, “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” that stated, “Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society," the Times pointed out to readers.
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“Indeed, the office of the presidency carries with it a tremendous power to drive the discourse,” the Times wrote Friday. “But the pattern of vanishing words established here suggests Mr. Trump and his administration may be more interested in chilling the national conversation — at least when it comes to their own disfavored topics — than in expanding it.”
Other words the government is now avoiding use of include: “all-inclusive,” “historically,” “Native American,” “underappreciated,” “health equity,” and “political,” according to the Times.
The publication added that the list is likely incomplete.
“Still, the words and phrases listed here represent a marked — and remarkable — shift in the corpus of language being used both in the federal government’s corridors of power and among its rank and file,” the Times said. “They are an unmistakable reflection of this administration’s priorities.”