This story was initially printed by Barn Raiser.
On the day of his inauguration, President Donald Trump claimed his administration would finish the “censorship of protected speech.” However actions converse louder than phrases. Due to a leaked electronic mail memo, we now know the Trump administration has drawn up a listing of 110 phrases and phrases which have now been banned from use within the Agricultural Analysis Service (ARS).
ARS is the division of the U.S. Division of Agriculture (USDA) tasked with offering the agricultural analysis, training and financial evaluation that protects the well being of the nation’s farmland, ensures the protection of the meals we eat and develops options for ailments, disasters and different threats to the meals provide. Most just lately, it was working over 600 analysis initiatives in 95 areas and had a $1.7 billion finances, which just like the phrases it makes use of might now be on the chopping block and will considerably hamper the division’s capacity to do its job.
The memo was posted on X (previously Twitter) on March 30 by Extra Good Union, the nonprofit media outlet based by Faiz Shakir, Bernie Sanders’s 2020 marketing campaign supervisor. In line with Jordan Zakarin, the journalist who broke the information, work on the ARS has largely already been halted on account of hiring freezes and staff’ procurement bank cards being throttled.
The memo’s writer, Sharon Strickland, an ARS administrator within the USDA’s Northeast Space, wrote to her ARS colleagues within the Analysis, Schooling and Economics division: “When evaluating agreements, these entries that embrace these phrases or related phrases can’t be submitted.” She added that such a overview will “be sure that we preserve compliance with the Administration’s EOS [executive orders].”
It’s unclear from the memo what “evaluating agreements” precisely refers to or why such evaluations are being required. A congressional staffer accustomed to the memo, advised Barn Raiser {that a} request for details about what the memo precisely means has been submitted to the USDA, however as of April 2 no response had been acquired.
Outraged by the memo, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D), a farmer who represents Maine’s 1st Congressional District, posted a scathing video response on her Instagram web page. Pingree advised Barn Raiser:
It’s not shocking that this Administration would go after something they deem “woke,” or in any respect associated to local weather change. However to focus on primary phrases which are basic to agricultural analysis is past the realm of motive. I’m certain that everybody—no matter the place they dwell (or their political occasion)—desires to have clear and secure consuming water, inexpensive housing, clear air, and needs to know if there’s PFAS of their soil.
This Administration has been clear in its perception—nevertheless malicious and misguided—that local weather change isn’t actual, and that adopting insurance policies to handle it’s a waste of time and money. Its attitudes in direction of local weather justice are equally dismissive.
This newest effort is a terrifying look into what this Administration is attempting to do: stamp out any and each try and create safer, extra inexpensive communities for People.
Local weather
From his first moments in workplace, Trump has unilaterally applied Mission 2025’s professional fossil gas insurance policies. Trump’s choose to steer the Environmental Safety Company Lee Zeldin, the previous New York state senator and fossil gas trade booster, has denigrated local weather applications because the “inexperienced new rip-off.” After his affirmation, Zeldin introduced sweeping actions to dismantle the Clear Air Act, rescinded the EPA’s 16-year-old willpower that greenhouse gases pose a hazard and lifted restrictions on poisonous air pollution.
By DOGE, Trump and Musk have frozen funding for renewable vitality and local weather associated agriculture applications. On March 25 the USDA introduced that it might launch beforehand approved grant funds to farmers and small rural enterprise house owners to construct renewable vitality initiatives—however provided that they rewrite functions to adjust to Trump’s Unleashing American Power Govt Order, which prioritizes fossil gas manufacturing and cuts federal help for renewable vitality initiatives.
The climate-related key phrases being banned by the ARS embrace:
local weather, local weather change, climate-change, altering local weather, local weather consulting, local weather fashions, local weather mannequin, local weather accountability, local weather threat, local weather resilience, local weather sensible agriculture, local weather sensible forestry, climatesmart, local weather science, local weather variability, world warming, carbon sequestration, GHG emission, GHG monitoring, GHG modeling, carbon emissions mitigation, greenhouse gasoline emission, methane emissions, inexperienced infrastructure, sustainable development, carbon pricing, carbon markets
Surroundings/Housing
This part of the banned thesaurus is split into 5 subcategories.
Constructing on the 2023 ruling by the Supreme Courtroom in Sackett v. EPA, the place the court docket determined by itself authority, with out scientific help, to considerably restrict the definition of “waters of america” and thus what wetlands deserved safety from air pollution, Zeldin’s EPA is taking steps to additional undermine the Clear Water Act.
On March 25, on the Environmental Council of the States’ spring assembly, Zeldin touted the company’s dedication to “cooperative federalism” within the effort to show over regulatory energy to the states. He additionally stated the company would additional revise the definition of “waters of america” in addition to the regulation of PFAS, or “ceaselessly chemical compounds,” which have polluted farmlands and destroyed the livelihoods of farmers nationwide, leaving the way forward for the EPA’s first-ever nationwide limits doubtful.
runoff, membrane filtration, microplastics, water air pollution, air air pollution, soil air pollution, groundwater air pollution, air pollution remediation, air pollution abatement, sediment remediation, contaminants of environmental concern, CEC, PFAS, PFOA, PCB, nonpoint supply air pollution
Water infrastructure banned phrases
water assortment, water remedy, water storage, water distribution, water administration, rural water, agricultural water, water conservation, water effectivity, water high quality, clear water, secure consuming water, area drainage, tile drainage
The memo additionally included key phrases for clear transportation, renewable vitality sources and different applications associated to local weather applications beneath Inflation Discount Act and the Biden administration’s so-called local weather sensible applications. This included federal funding to help the development of photo voltaic panels and wind generators, but additionally included help for biogas, a controversial supply of pure gasoline billed as a strategy to offset methane emissions from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) by changing giant quantities of animal waste into gas by anaerobic digesters. Analysis has proven these digesters should not as leak-proof or environmentally pleasant because the trade claims, whereas critics say these digesters use federal funds to prop up industrial agriculture with know-how solely exists due to the large quantity of waste created on farms with 1000’s of heads of livestock.
Clear-energy banned phrases
clear energy, clear gas, different vitality, geothermal, photo voltaic vitality, solar energy, photovoltaic, agrivoltaics, wind energy, nuclear vitality, nuclear energy, bioenergy, biofuel, biogas, biomethane, ethanol, diesel, aviation gas, pyrolysis, vitality conversion
Clear transportation banned phrases
electrical automobile, hydrogen automobile, gas cell, low-emission automobile
The USDA operates a number of rural housing applications by its Rural Housing Service, a division inside the company’s workplace of Rural Improvement. Annually, the workplace of Rural Improvement supplies billions of {dollars} to small cities, farmers and rural companies. It is likely one of the company’s fundamental instruments to advertise financial progress in rural America. An estimated 5.6 million rural households—about one-quarter of all rural households—pay extra every month for housing than they’ll afford.
In February, Housing Help Council CEO David Lipsetz stated in response to reviews of in depth cuts on the Division of Housing and City Improvement (HUD) and the USDA, “Lots of of 1000’s of rural households—many aged and disabled—dwell in HUD’s publicly supported housing or depend on HUD and USDA rental applications to discover a place they’ll name dwelling. These public applications maintain rural communities as they cycle by powerful instances.”
Reasonably priced housing banned phrases
inexpensive housing, inexpensive dwelling, low-income housing, backed housing, transitional housing, housing affordability, housing effectivity, prefabricated housing
DEI
In keeping with Trump and the GOP’s widespread assault on Variety, Fairness and Inclusion applications, the USDA memo additionally included a spread of key phrases coping with race, gender and sexuality and their overlapping reference to values of equitability and social justice.
fairness, DEI, DEIA, equitable, inclusive, BIPOC, folks of coloration, deprived, social justice, environmental justice, underserved, underrepresented, justice40, lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, non-binary, two-spirit, queer, QT, various, variety, inclusion, accessibility, accessible, black, indigenous, asexual, non-conforming, trans, weak, gender, gendered, gender, gendered
