I knew this was false the minute I heard it and was waiting for the inevitable explanation/correction which wouldn’t get a tenth of the attention of the original story. But check how far the crazy has spread and is still spreading.
Via NRO:
On Friday, the Washington Post published a story that began:
The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation’s top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases — including “fetus” and “transgender” — in official documents being prepared for next year’s budget.
The story goes on to complicate this claim a little bit, noting, for instance, some distinctions between terms that were supposedly flagged as prohibited in draft budget documents and others regarding which a prohibition “had been conveyed verbally” in a meeting among career officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the basic claim of the story is that HHS is telling its employees they’re not allowed to use seven words or terms—“vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”
Naturally, this assertion has caused a big stir, setting loose everything from charges of censorship to worries that the CDC won’t be able to help victims of terrible diseases if they can’t communicate openly about their work. I was pretty startled by the story myself, and it sent me reaching out to a number of officials at HHS and its sub-agencies for an explanation. These conversations have left me persuaded that the impression created by the Post’s story is not accurate.