On his first day in office, Republican (MAGA) President Donald Trump issued a flurry of executive orders (EOs).
Among them was the MAGA movement's response to "woke."
It called for censorship to push an agenda (Project 2025) based in misogyny, White supremacy, Christian nationalism, and anti-intellectualism.
Government departments and agencies were ordered to scrub their websites, grants, programs, research, and publications of anything scientifically or medically literate, along with any signs of the right's warped perception of what diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is.
Now a memorandum from another government department—the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)—has been leaked.
This Cabinet-level department is headed by Brooke Rollins, co-founder of the America First Policy Institute, a "nonprofit think tank established to promote Trump's public policy agenda."
The USDA Agricultural Research Service's memo offers a clear picture of the words and concepts that terrify Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Trump's MAGA minions, and Republicans to the level that they want their mere mention scrubbed from existence.
RELATED: U.S. Military Dragged After Photos Of WWII Bomber Enola Gay Are Flagged For Removal Due To 'DEI' Purge
Photos of the two page memo issued by ARS were shared on social media by the nonprofit advocacy organization More Perfect Union.
You can see a clearer image here:
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The memo states:
"...entries that include these terms or similar terms cannot be submitted."
"This review [will] ensure that we maintain compliance with the [Trump] Administration’s [executive orders].”
The terms are then broken down into three main categories with specific examples and subcategories provided.
The main categories are:
- DEI
- CLIMATE
- ENVIRONMENT/HOUSING
Some of the verboten vocabulary includes the following words or phrases: "people of color," "gay," "lesbian," "gender," "transgender," "Black," "Indigenous," "climate change," "global warming," "solar power," "wind power," "electric vehicle," "low-income housing," "water pollution," "air pollution," "soil pollution," "clean water," "water quality," and "water treatment."
Under the last category, ENVIRONMENT/HOUSING, are the subcategories:
- Clean-Energy
- Clean transportation
- Affordable Housing
- Pollution Remediation
- Water infrastructure
The absurdity of an agency focused on agricultural research and development being forced to take issue with language core to their primary function—water, air, soil—might be considered a prank.
But the memo was released on March 31, not April 1, and absurdity seems to be a central theme of Trump 2.0.
People, including Maine Democratic Representative and former farmer Chellie Pingree, are calling out the word bans for what they are.
Accomplishing nothing, the Trump administration's war on words are a ploy to score political points with a biased base.
Early reports came of gag orders on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), National Institute of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Among the words those agencies needed to scrub were "women, disability, bias, status, trauma, Black, Hispanic communities, socioeconomic, ethnicity and systemic."
And almost immediately, things began to disappear from government websites, indicating that for the Trump administration, "DEI" means anything that features anyone who is not a White, heteronormative, cisgender, Christian man.
Some references on websites were later restored due to massive backlash.
Like after the Indigenous Code Talkers of WWI and WWII, Buffalo Soldiers of the American West, and the accomplishments of the Tuskeegee Airmen, 100th Infantry Battalion, and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team during WWII were all removed by Pete Hegseth's Department of Defense.
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