This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.
By Kate Yoder, Grist
In his first hours back in the White House in January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” Yet it was immediately clear he was in fact imposing rules on language, ordering the government to recognize only two genders and shut down any diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. In one executive order, he redefined “energy” to exclude solar and wind power.
Within days, not just “diversity” but also “clean energy” and “climate change” began vanishing from federal websites. Other institutions and organizations started scrubbing their websites. Scientists who receive federal funding were told to end any activities that contradicted Trump’s executive orders. Government employees — at least the ones who hadn’t been fired — began finding ways to take their climate work underground, worried that even acknowledging the existence of global warming could put their jobs at risk.
The Trump administration’s crackdown on words tied to progressive causes reflects the rise of what’s been called the “woke right,” a reactionary movement with its own language rules in opposition to “woke” terms that have become more prevalent in recent years. Since Trump took office, federal agencies have deleted climate change information from more than 200 government websites, according to the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, a network that tracks these changes. These shifts in language lay the groundwork for how people understand what’s real and true, widening the deepening divide between how Republicans and Democrats understand the world.
“I think that all powerful individuals and all powerful entities are in some sense trying to bend reality to favor them, to play for their own interests,” said Norma Mendoza-Denton, an anthropology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who coedited a book about Trump’s use of language. “So it’s not unique, but definitely the scope at which it’s happening, the way it’s happening, the speed of it right now is unprecedented.”
Gretchen Gehrke, who monitors federal websites for the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, says that government sites are one of the few sources the public trusts for authoritative, reliable information, which is why removing facts about climate change from them is such a problem.
“It really does alter our ability as a collective society to be able to identify and discuss reality,” Gehrke said. “If we only are dealing with the information that we’re receiving via social media, we’re literally operating in different realities.”
Institutions that fail to follow Trump’s executive orders have already faced consequences. After Trump rechristened the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America,” for instance, The Associated Press stood by the original, centuries-old name in its coverage — and its reporters lost access to the White House as a result. The effects of these language mandates have reverberated across society, with university researchers, nonprofits, and business executives searching for MAGA-friendly phrases to stay out of the administration’s crosshairs. The solar industry is no longer talking about climate change, for instance, but “American energy dominance,” echoing Trump’s platform.
The new language rules are expected to limit what many scientists are permitted to research. “It’s going to make it really hard to do the climate justice work,” said Amanda Fencl, director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists, referring to the field that studies how a warming planet affects people unequally. The National Science Foundation, which accounts for about a quarter of federal support to universities, has been flagging studies that might violate Trump’s executive orders on gender and diversity initiatives based on a search for words such as “female,” “institutional,” “biases,” “marginalized,” and “trauma.” “I do think that deleting information and repressing and silencing scientists, it just has a chilling effect,” Fencl said. “It’s really demoralizing.”
During Trump’s first term, references to climate change disappeared from federal environmental websites, with the use of the term declining by roughly 38 percent between 2016 and 2020, only to reappear under the Biden administration. Trump’s second term appears to be taking a much more aggressive stance on wiping out words used by left-leaning organizations, scientists, and the broader public, likely with more to come. Last summer, a leaked video from Project 2025 — a policy agenda organized by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank — revealed a former Trump official declaring that political appointees would have to “eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere.”
Some government employees are finding ways to continue their climate work, despite the hostile atmosphere. The Atlantic reported in February that one team of federal workers at an unnamed agency had sealed itself off in a technology-free room to conduct meetings related to climate change, with employees using encrypted Signal messages instead of email. “All I have ever wanted to do was help the American people become more resilient to climate change,” an anonymous source at the agency reportedly said. “Now I am being treated like a criminal.”
The last time Trump was in office, federal employees replaced many references to “climate change” with softer phrases like “sustainability” and “resilience.” Now many of those vague, previously safe terms are disappearing from websites too, leaving fewer and fewer options for raising concerns about the environment. “You really cannot address a problem that you can’t identify,” Gehrke said. A study in the journal Ecological Economics in 2022 examined euphemisms for climate change used under the previous Trump administration and argued that the avoidance of clear language could undermine efforts to raise awareness for taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Yet using more palatable synonyms could also be viewed as a way for scientists and government employees to continue doing important work. For example, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency rebranded its “Climate Resilience” site to “Future Conditions” in January, it stripped references to climate change from its main landing page while leaving them in subpages. “To me, that reads as trying to fly under the radar,” Gehrke said.
Of course, the reality of the changing climate won’t disappear, even if the phrase itself goes into hiding. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who last year signed a bill deleting most mentions of climate change from Florida state law, is still dealing with the consequences of a warming planet, continuing to approve funding for coastal communities to adapt to flooding and protect themselves against hurricanes. He just calls it “strengthening and fortifying Florida” without any mention of climate change.
“You can ban a word if you want,” Mendoza-Denton said, “but the concept still needs to be talked about.”
This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/language/trump-delete-climate-change-words-resilience-order/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org. Banner image: A 3D illustration of climate change and other terms (iStock image).
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