What's in a name? Trump set to wipe government language

RICHMOND - As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to assume the White House on Jan. 20, the federal government is bracing for a massive overhaul in policy – and how it labels issues and individuals.

Potentially limited or wiped from official government websites and documents are references to climate change, "undocumented immigrants" or "non-citizens" in favor of "illegal aliens" and prominent mentions of LGBTQ+ rights, experts say.

Ahead of Trump's first term, researchers expected to see changes that were more subtle – like references to "impacts" versus "effects" of climate change, explained Gretchen Gehrke, Website Monitoring Program Lead at the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative.

"And we did see a fair amount of content changes like that, but what we mostly saw was straight up deletion," she said. "We mostly saw massive access reductions, a lot of information suppression."

This time, Gehrke and other policy advocates are bracing for an even more extreme shift. From references to climate change to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, the likely changes could be more significant than mere semantics.

"It's important how things are presented; it's important to not get rid of actually talking about carbon emissions and actually talking about methane, to just talk about some sort of hand-wavy 'sustainability' without saying what that means," Gehrke said.

"We can't actually address a problem that we can't name.”

'Taken down' and 'stripped'

A spokeswoman for Trump’s transition team did not answer directly when asked to what extent references to climate change would be changed or removed but touted his record on energy and the environment in his first term.

“In his second term, President Trump will once again deliver clean air and water for American families while Making America Wealthy Again,” said Karoline Leavitt.

During Trump's first administration, the U.S. government removed or significantly reduced the prominence of climate change content on government websites and removed information about international obligations on climate change, according to a 2018 report from Gehrke and her colleagues.

"What appears to be part of the Trump administration's agenda is to take away information that can point out a problem," she said.

President Joe Biden's administration refocused on issues tied to climate change and mitigation strategies.

Those efforts included a historic emphasis on "environmental justice" issues - and even a quantifiable scorecard the government has used to identify historically underserved communities when considering grant applications and financial requests.

Gehrke said she expects that tool to be on the chopping block on "day one" of Trump's administration.

Her organization is tracking or monitoring some 5,000 URLs this time around for changes, with a focus on climate and environmental justice.

"We expect most any justice-related language to be stripped ... We're cognizant of the ‘anti-woke’ campaigning and anywhere there's diversity, equity and inclusion type language," she said. 

"So we're watching that and expecting environmental justice stuff to go away across agencies."

'Dehumanizing' language

Immigration – and Trump's agenda of the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants – is arguably the most fleshed-out policy priority of the incoming administration.

And with it could come a move away from terms like "undocumented immigrants” or “non-citizens” used to describe people who are in the country without valid visas and a return to "illegal alien," an old holdover from immigration law.

"Using a term like 'illegal' evokes images of criminality, which undermines the reality of the way in which undocumented immigrants contribute to our economy and communities," said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the non-profit American Immigration Council.

The terminology could have implications for refugee and asylum policy if things aren't clearly defined.

"The blanket use of the word 'migrant' or 'criminal migrants' to describe all non-citizens and all people arriving at the southern border and those who are here living undocumented with years of life is a way to paint a picture in Americans' minds of somebody who's the other, who doesn't belong here – who doesn't contribute, who doesn't add value," Gupta said.

"And that kind of language, as we've seen, can be effective in dehumanizing and creating an empathy deficiency when it comes to these communities we're talking about."

Asked if the incoming administration planned to fully restore official government use of the term “illegal alien,” Leavitt said that Trump “was given a mandate by the American people to stop the invasion of illegal immigrants, secure the border and deport dangerous criminals and terrorists that make our communities less safe. He will deliver.”

'Erasing' transgender people?

When Trump first took office, the government curtailed references to LGBTQ+ issues, and there could be a similar approach this time around, said David Stacy, vice president of government affairs at the Human Rights Campaign.

Project 2025, a policy blueprint conservative activists drew up for a would-be Trump administration in the run-up to the campaign, called for the deletion of the terms “sexual orientation,” “gender identity” and others, “out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation and piece of legislation that exists” if perceived to interfere with free speech.

Though its impact remains unclear, anti-trans messaging was among the most heavily rotated series of ads by the Trump campaign.

"They seem to be putting (in) more folks that are true believers in trying to erase transgender people from society and their ability to function in society," Stacy said. "In that sense, this is a much more dangerous administration than the first one."

The U.S. Congress already voted in December in the annual defense spending bill to restrict certain funding for gender-affirming care for minor children of military members.

Leavitt said Trump campaigned on “common sense policies: ending discussions about gender and sex in classrooms, reorienting public education to focus on reading, writing and math and ending taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for inmates in federal prisons.”

Research shows strong public support for protecting the LGBTQ+ community remains largely intact.

"The fundamentals here have not really moved despite the hostility of the campaign around these things," Stacy said.

"There is going to be significant opposition from the public and ... I know they won't achieve all the things they hope to achieve, but they can do some real harm."

This article was updated on Tuesday Jan 7, 2025 at 15:29 GMT to change the title of person cited in paragraph 25.

(Reporting by David Sherfinski; Editing by Anastasia Moloney and Ayla Jean Yackley.)