Trump Administration Bans Nation’s Leading Health Experts from Using the Word ‘Transgender’

· Updated on May 28, 2018

The government’s leading health experts have been banned from using the word “transgender” in budget documents, as the Washington Post reports.

Policy analysts with the Centers for Disease Control were allegedly presented with a list of verboten terminology in a 90-minute meeting with the Trump administration on Thursday. Other words stricken from annual budget reports include “diversity,” “vulnerable,” “fetus,” “science-based,” and “evidence-based.”

The latter terms might be difficult to write around, given that the CDC is a public health institute. In its Fiscal Year 2017 report, the federal entity used the word “transgender” 10 times, and “evidence-based” was included more than 100 times.

But to avoid these phrases, unnamed sources suggested the White House offered various alternatives. “Science-based,” which was used four times in last year’s budget, could be replaced with something like the following: “The CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.”

Advocates condemned the proposal as yet another attempt by the Trump administration to rollback LGBTQ rights after its failed trans military ban.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, called the decision an “unprecedented attack on transgender people, science, and public health itself” in a press release.

“To pretend and insist that transgender people do not exist, and to allow this lie to infect public health research and prevention is irrational and very dangerous, and not just to transgender people,” Keisling claimed. “That they have banned the phrases ‘evidence-based’ and ‘science-based’ tells us all we need to know: The Trump Administration is full of dangerous science deniers who have no business near American public health systems like the CDC.”

“They are actually going to kill Americans if they do not stop,” she continued.

The administration’s suggestions likewise did not go over well with longtime staffers at the CDC, according to the Post.

A source claims that the reaction in the CDC offices last week amounted to: “Are you serious? Are you kidding?” Although he claimed that experts with the center hadn’t learned of the administration’s edict, the source suggested the regulations could cause a mutiny.

“Our subject matter experts will not lay down quietly,” the CDC official said.

Photography: Getty Images

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