The free-speech advocacy organization PEN America has published a list of over 250 words and phrases that are reportedly considered unacceptable by the administration of President Donald Trump and are “being scrubbed from government websites and documents.”

While the White House has denied creating a list of banned words, many of the words on PEN America’s list potentially contradict the president’s unconstitutional orders against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) by acknowledging human diversity, LGBTQ+ people, and cultural oppression. This includes terms like “accessibility,” “cultural competence,” “discrimination,” “ethnicity,” “female,” “gender,” “implicit bias,” “inequality,” “Native American,” “pronoun,” “social justice,” “transgender,” and “vulnerable populations.”

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“How can we have intelligent or difficult conversations if we can’t even use the words, the most basic unit of meaning?” Jonathan Friedman, Sy Syms managing director of U.S. Free Expression Programs, told PEN America. “We’re now living in a country where the government has decided that a sweeping array of everyday terms will now be erased and forbidden in government agencies, websites, or even scientific research proposals. These prohibitions on language are utterly chilling and will impede efforts to research real-world problems and advance human knowledge.”

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Some of the words merely acknowledge the existence of things that anger the president by challenging his political worldview; terms like “clean energy,” “climate crisis,” “immigrants,” “gender-affirming care,” “the Gulf of Mexico,” and anything “science-based.”

Some are initialisms, like “EEJ” (equity and environmental justice), “GBV” (gender-based violence), “MCSIs” (minority-serving institutions), and “NCI” (the National Cancer Institute). Others discourage federal websites or federally funded groups from covering anything that has “received recent attention from Congress” or “widespread or critical media attention.”

However, ten of the words caught our attention for their oddness. Why, for example, would the Trump administration oppose open discussions about fluoride, dietary guidelines, or a Cancer Moonshot?

accessible

Trump’s executive order targeting DEI policies actually mentioned “DEIA” programs; that is, ones that focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (meaning disabilities).

Since his election, the White House removed the accessibility page and all American Sign Language content from its website. The Department of Justice, which enforces the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), withdrew key guidances to ensure that businesses comply with the ADA, claiming their removal would help keep consumer prices down. Trump is also trying to close the Department of Education, which enforces law that helps ensure disabled people’s access to a “free and appropriate public education.”

By slashing millions of dollars and thousands of jobs from government agencies, Trump is ensuring that public services that Americans depend on every day will become less accessible… and that’s something he’d probably prefer wasn’t publicly mentioned.

allyship

Most DEI (or DEIA) efforts seek to ally institutions with marginalized individuals, so the Trump administration may have understood allyship in that context.

at-risk

The Trump administration likes to envision the U.S. as a meritocracy where any hard worker can succeed. So, it likely despises the concept of “at-risk” groups that face greater likelihoods of disease, poverty, or other hardships due to U.S. society’s failings.

Such “at-risk” groups are often grouped by race, ethnicity, gender, economic level, and other personal characteristics. And, as we’ve seen, the administration doesn’t like acknowledging, let alone addressing, such inequalities because they reek of DEI efforts.

Cancer Moonshot

This term refers to a program resurrected by President Joe Biden that invested millions into cancer research with the goal of cutting the country’s cancer death toll in half by 2047. Like many of Biden’s efforts, Trump has sought to undo this one too.

The Trump administration imposed a new policy to cap indirect costs for National Institutes of Health research grants at 15%, effectively hindering the program. Now that he’s crippled it, he’s likely in no mood to hear about it any longer.

commercial sex worker/prostitute

The censorship of these terms may have to do with Trump’s Christian nationalist ties that largely see sex workers as immoral and underserving of acknowledgment or protection. Democrats and Republicans have long conflated sex work with human trafficking, though the two are different.

dietary guidelines/ultra-processed foods

Among Project 2025’s many dystopian goals are a desire to roll back governmental policies advising against the excess eating of ultra-processed foods (that is, pre-packaged products — often high in sugar and fat — that use chemical additives like food colorings, emulsifiers, and preservatives and are associated with heart disease, diabetes, and obesity).

The U.S. has no policy on these foods, and Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spoken against these foods. Nevertheless, Project 2025 wants Kennedy to reform or eliminate the U.S. recommended dietary guidelines altogether during his tenure, claiming that “nutrition and dietary choices are best left to individuals to address their personal needs.”

The push to eliminate dietary guidelines is mostly just a form of business deregulation that would allow food businesses to make maximum profit and push unhealthy foods on consumers regardless of the health consequences.

elderly

At age 78, Trump is the second-oldest American president ever in office (with the first-oldest being Biden, who was 82 when he left office). While the Trump campaign repeatedly painted Biden as too old and feeble to be president, Trump largely avoided such scrutiny, even despite his erratic behavior and other speech and physical patterns that suggested a possible mental decline.

But while Trump may want to avoid comparisons to the elderly, his policies haven’t shown much love to senior citizens either. He has slashed public assistance programs used by the elderly; is downsizing the Department of Veterans Affairs, which oversees health and financial benefits for the nation’s aging military vets; and has proposed drastic changes to Social Security and Medicare (the federal health insurance for anyone age 65 and older), which will limit access to benefits for millions of elderly people.

fluoride

Even though fluoride in water helps reduce tooth decay and oral disease, Secretary Kennedy has expressed skepticism and hostility towards water fluoridation, calling it “industrial waste” and saying that Trump will “advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water” because of neurological and carcinogenic health risks often attributed to it without scientific merit.

As such, anti-fluoridation bills have been introduced in at least four states, including Florida, Montana, North Dakota, and Tennessee.

marijuana

It’s unclear why Trump would oppose this particular term, though he has claimed never to have smoked it.

On Friday, Trump signed an executive order claiming that a voter-approved ballot measure to legalize medical cannabis in Washington, D.C., is a “failed” policy that “opened the door to disorder,” making the nation’s capital less safe. Trump’s order called for more local law enforcement officials to prosecute drug possession, sale, and use.

Despite this, during his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump said he might support rescheduling cannabis from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule III drug, which would allow federally-funded research, the use of U.S. banking for cannabis businesses, and increased sales for medical and recreational purposes.

peanut allergies

A fake Truth Social post attributed to Trump showed the president calling the Department of Education “one of the most terrible organizations on Earth” because it allegedly spent “billions” reinforcing “policies of extreme radicals to endoctrinate [sic] our youth by enforcing peanut bans to accommodate a very small group (very LOUD) who don’t like the beautiful nut.”

Even though Trump didn’t actually publish that tweet, the Department of Education does indeed provide guidance and resources for schools and early care and education programs to manage food allergies, including peanut allergies.

Perhaps Trump was so upset by the fake post that he didn’t want to hear about peanut allergies ever again? Regardless, such silence could be deadly, seeing as the legumes can put some people into anaphylactic shock.

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