Trump Administration Bans CDC from Using the Word 'Transgender'

The administration also banned the use of "diversity," and "evidence-based" in CDC materials to be submitted for Trump's budget.

Tracy E. Gilchrist

Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP of Editorial and Special Projects at equalpride. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.

Read Full Bio

Tracy E. Gilchrist

December 16 2017 8:15 AM EST

July 23 2019 3:22 AM EST

Sorry to interrupt...
But we wanted to take a moment to thank you for reading. Your support makes original LGBTQ+ reporting possible. Help us hold Trump accountable.

One-time Monthly

$19.67 $50 Other

$5 $19.67 $50

Since Donald Trump took office nearly a year ago, the White House scrubbed its site of pages dedicated to the needs of LGBT people, the Trump administration bumped LGBT-related questions from the upcoming census, and the Department of Health and Human Services expunged questions about sexual orientation and gender identity from surveys of elderly people.

Now, the administration has prohibited the Center for Disease Controls from using seven words or phrases in any official documents for the 2018 budget. One of those words is transgender, The Washington Post reported.

Senior officials who oversee the budget for the nation's largest public health organization were informed of the list of prohibited words, which also includes "fetus," "diversity," "vulnerable," "entitlement," "evidence-based," and "science-based," at a meeting at the CDC in Atlanta on Thursday, according to the Washington Post.

News of the forbidden words came out via a CDC analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, however, other officials confirmed that the Trump administration had banned certain words and phrases.

The ban of the word transgender in CDC budget materials that will go to the agency's partners and to Congress when considering Trump's budget is that the agency needs to use the word in terms of working on preventing HIV/AIDS and other diseases that disproportionately affect trans people.