The Trump administration’s purge of “gender ideology” and DEI from the federal government has reached into America’s laboratories with orders to strip language they describe as “forbidden terms” from scientists’ published work.

The list of terms is breathtakingly broad.

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At the National Science Foundation, an internal document obtained by The Washington Post ordered a review of grants and all research slated for publication to search for dozens of words, including “trauma,” “barriers,” “equity,” and “excluded.” The terms “historically” and “women” are flagged for censors’ scrutiny.

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Previously published work containing those terms is also under review and is ordered withdrawn if it runs afoul of the language ban.

The language sweep is based on President Donald Trump’s executive orders banishing “gender ideology” and DEI from the federal government.

In a remarkable overreach, scientists who merely receive NSF funding and don’t work directly for the agency were put on notice to cease any activity that doesn’t comply with the executive orders.

“In particular, this may include, but is not limited to conferences, trainings, workshops, considerations for staffing and participant selection, and any other grant activity that uses or promotes the use of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) principles and frameworks or violates federal anti-discrimination laws,” a message to NSF funding recipients said.

NSF had already removed a number of published health documents from the agency’s website in the wake of an earlier directive from the acting head of the Office of Personnel Management, Charles Ezell. That memo dictated agency forms record only an individual’s sex and not gender identity and ordered websites and social media to be scrubbed of content that “inculcate or promote gender ideology.”

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, staff was ordered to scrub the health agency’s website of some two dozen terms, including “gender,” “transgender,” “pregnant person,” “pregnant people,” “LGBT,” “transsexual,” “nonbinary,” “assigned male at birth,” “biologically male,” “biologically female,” and “he/she/they/them.”

The Office of Personnel Management, which serves as the federal government’s human resources department, was one of the first targets of Elon Musk’s DOGE takeover of the federal bureaucracy.  

The latest order has thrown the NSF into chaos, as researchers parse flagged terms with multiple meanings. The word “accessibility” would be flagged if it’s used to refer to DEI but is not if it’s about “data accessibility.” Rural communities are part of “geographic diversity,” for example, therefore the description isn’t subject to the ban.

With an annual budget of $9 billion, NSF grants fund scientific research around the world, with many in support of young scientists. Grants are awarded to projects that advance scientific discovery and have intellectual merit; many share DEI goals like broadening participation in science among underrepresented groups of people.

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