For an administration that hates science so much, they sure are doing a lot of recycling.
Musk and his goons showing up at government offices with zip drives? That’s a coup attempt wearing business casual instead of a viking hat.
Losing funding because the paperwork included certain banned words? That was happening in 2017, but less extensively and without as much attention. Then, it was reported that the CDC was to avoid seven words in its budget documents; in 2017, the frequency of those words was 60% less than in the Obama administration, which had just ended: diversity, entitlement, evidence-based, fetus, science-based, transgender, and vulnerable. If you found yourself, in 2020, wondering how the hell everyone got to be rejecting evidence-based, science-based information while they paraded around in their gas guzzlers screaming about parents’ rights because PPE terrified them, well that should demystify some of that harmful nonsense.
Now in 2025, the National Science Foundation is reviewing grants using a long list of keywords developed by this administration because in their minds they connect to diversity, equity, and inclusion, which are the opposite of homogeneity, prejudice, and segregation — and we need to keep saying that out loud.
Those who want to pretend to be moderates will say that this “new” scheme merely gets the word flagged for review. They are relying on a software algorithm, and if you’ve ever tried searching a simple word and gotten very different results, you know software is not foolproof. I subscribe to Google email alerts that are supposed to tell me about newly published pages regarding pedestrian or cyclist crashes in Connecticut. What I want to know lands in my mailbox, but probably 25-30% of the information is somewhat irrelevant, like crashes out-of-state or repeats of stories published weeks, months, or even years ago. Other times, it’s very irrelevant, like really any other news item that might share a website with an article about a crash. Using this means that I am unlikely to miss a report that is published by a news outlet that I do not regularly read, but it also means sifting through that redundant or irrelevant information.
When a grant is flagged because it contains one of dozens of fairly common terms, the reviewer is supposed to then assess if it violates the hateful and divisive executive orders. As others have explained, this means that the human reviewer is able to decide if the trigger word was used in the all humans were made in the image of God kind of way, or if it was used in a strictly scientific way — something that becomes ever mushier in an anti-science, anti-intellectual administration.
This also means that, for the time being, there is still a human being involved who can defy those orders if they have the moral courage to do so.
What are those words? According to the Washington Post and Darby Saxbe:
- Activism
- Activists
- Advocacy
- Advocate
- Advocates
- Antiracist
- Barrier
- Barriers
- Biased
- Biased toward
- Biases
- Biases toward
- BIPOC
- Black and Latinx
- Community diversity
- Community equity
- Cultural differences
- Cultural heritage
- Cultural relevance
- Culturally responsive
- Disabilities
- Disability
- Discriminated
- Discrimination
- Discriminatory
- Diverse backgrounds
- Diverse communities
- Diverse community
- Diverse group
- Diverse groups
- Diversifying
- Diversity
- Diversity and inclusion
- Diversity equity
- Enhance the diversity
- Enhancing diversity
- Equal opportunity
- Equality
- Equitable
- Equity
- Ethnicity
- Excluded
- Exclusion
- Female
- Females
- Fostering inclusivity
- Gender
- Gender diversity
- Genders
- Hate speech
- Hispanic minority
- Historically
- Implicit bias
- Implicit biases
- Inclusion
- Inclusive
- Inclusiveness
- Inclusivity
- Increase diversity
- Indigenous communities
- Inequalities
- Inequality
- Inequitable
- Inequities
- Institutional
- Intersectional
- LGBT
- Male dominated
- Marginalize
- Marginalized
- Minorities
- Minority
- Multicultural
- Oppression
- Polarization
- Political
- Prejudice
- Privilege
- Promoting diversity
- Race and ethnicity
- Racial
- Racially
- Racial diversity
- Racial inequality
- Racial justice
- Racism
- Segregation
- Sense of belonging
- Sexual preferences
- Social justice
- Socio cultural
- Socioeconomic
- Status
- Stereotype
- Systemic
- Trauma
- Under appreciated
- Under represented
- Under served
- Under valued
- Victim
- Victims
- Women
- Women and underrepresented
The administration that can’t handle phrasing like “pregnant person” has essentially made it so grants using the language they would prefer — “pregnant women” — ends up flagged because “women” is now a dirty word.
I have to wonder how George Carlin would have responded to all this.
And now, just as expected, NOAA has been ordered to inspect grants for climate-related words. The words you can’t say if you want money?
- Climate
- Methane
- Nitrous oxide
- Greenhouse gas
- Climate science
- Carbon
- The Paris Agreement
There are more terms that those seven that will interfere with research. Climate change does not become any less of a reality if we stop researching it; what happens is we screw ourselves and others by remaining ignorant and unprepared.
For an administration that claims to hate waste, they sure are wasting resources to screen grants that have already been screened, approved, and underway. It was never about efficiency.
