I am not a lawyer but this CDC order seems contrary to Trump’s recent Executive Order “RESTORING FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ENDING FEDERAL CENSORSHIP”.
This Executive Order states in part: “Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.
…
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to: (a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;
(b) ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen;
…
Sec. 3. Ending Censorship of Protected Speech.
(a) No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to section 2 of this order.”
This is an administration that is actively ignoring other EOs such as anti-DEI initiatives. An administration that has come out and said that either all humans are neither male or female, or both male and female at once. This is an administration that either tried to send $50M in condoms to Gaza, or thought their followers were too stupid to believe the lie. This is also the administration that hates the military, police, and Americans in general. None of this is debatable. It's backed up by action. So, not surprised why we'd think they'd be burdened by the law.
> this CDC order seems contrary to Trump’s recent Executive Order
Freedom of speech and the First Amendment generally apply to the government imposing penalties on private citizens, e.g. through criminal law.
The CDC is the government. The government as an employer regularly imposes speech restrictions on government employees and always has, e.g. if you're a public school teacher and you want to teach students to believe that vaccines cause autism, they can tell you not to do that and fire you if you don't. You can imagine the trouble if that wasn't the case.
> You can imagine the trouble if that wasn't the case.
While you're absolutely right, just wanted to take this opportunity to point out that we may well not need to imagine this particular scenario, unfortunately, as it might happen very soon indeed.
Based on a man who has dedicated the last twenty years of his life to fighting vaccines (and who thinks that even the polio vaccine killed more people through cancer than it saved) becoming Health and Human Services secretary. What makes you so sure that antivaxx propaganda will continue being banned from education?
When Trump (or Republicans, generally) say "free speech", they patently do not mean what the rest of us mean by free speech. They mean:
1. Everyone should be able to say horrible things about sexual and racial minorities.
2. Everyone should be able to deny scientific facts that are inconvenient to Republican ideology, the fossil fuel industry, or any of their friends.
3. There can be no consequences for (1) or (2), even when it obviously contradicts other laws (libel, incitement of violence, fraud, etc.) or oaths (to truth, to the constitution).
4. Stating a fact or opinion contrary to (1) or (2) is in fact trampling the free-speech rights of right-wingers, and is therefore forbidden.
They don't want free speech. They want free speech for themselves, and enforced consent, if not assent, from everyone else.
All right, then by this logic what does the left mean by "free speech". You talk about scientific facts, so does the left believe we cannot say scientific facts about biology? Furthermore, I'm not aware of any censorship regarding fossil fuels. My understanding is that the Sierra Club and Thunberg are able to say whatever they want in this country if this is what you are talking about.
One difference is that the left doesn't generally advocate for absolute free speech, so it isn't hypocritical. I think the left is generally more open about the areas where free speech shouldn't be absolute - namely, where it causes manifest harm, especially to underprivileged groups - whereas the right will use it in a doublespeak way where they claim to be free-speech absolutists while actually favoring only their own ideology.
But also, the main difference is that the left wants to protect speech that is factually true and punish lies, whereas the right wants to protect lies and punish truths. So even if the strategies were very similar, I wouldn't actually care all that much - you can still differentiate and make a value judgment. Scientists should lose federal grants if they publish made-up or obviously biased research; they shouldn't lose federal grants if they publish results that are inconvenient to the current president's fragile masculinity.
> does the left believe we cannot say scientific facts about biology?
No.
I'm guessing you're trying to not-so-subtly talk about gender identity/trans people. If you're trying to say that "there are only two biological sexes" is a true fact that the left suppresses, then (1) it isn't a true fact (according to literally the entire medical community), (2) even if it were, it's not relevant to gender identity (nobody questions that trans women are biologically male, it just isn't relevant), and (3) the left position isn't that you can't say such things, just that saying it makes you an idiot and likely a bigot, and it should be treated like any other hate speech: if it ends up causing harm (e.g., by inciting physical attacks on trans people, or getting them fired from their jobs) then there should be legal consequences (the harmed people should be able to sue you, it should be a violation of equal-employment laws, etc.).
> I'm not aware of any censorship regarding fossil fuels.
Have you looked at any news reporting lately? The Trump administration just spent half of last week stripping every mention of climate change from every government website, and threatening any research organization that takes public money against looking into it.
> the Sierra Club and Thunberg are able to say whatever they want in this country
The Sierra Club is a mess and a neutered shell of what it used to be, so nobody really cares what it says.
Greta Thunberg has been personally mocked and threatened by Donald Trump, so I don't think it's fair to say that she can say whatever she wants - I think she'd be in very real danger if she came here.
We are losing this battle, every kid now talks about how they are “hype” rather than hyped for something, and talking about being “tan” rather than tanned is already commonplace in the USA
No, no, no. A bias government has layers in opposite directions at an angle of about 30 degrees to the way of travel, as opposed to a radial government where layers are parallel to each other.
Radial governments have better fuel economy, and suffer fewer blowouts.
In my experience, the more loudly someone shouts about being a crusader for free speech, the more likely they are to actively be attacking others' freedom of speech.
It just seemed like an outright lie and I guess it is.
It's a generic rhetorical flourish, those often come with a bit of hyperbole, aren't universally applicable, etc. That's a normal thing that happens when people have normal conversations, especially if they're a little worked up. It's this cliché, without the iambic pentameter
If you find something someone's said unclear, you're better off just asking instead of smacking them with a wikipedia link and then calling them a liar, though.
You’re arguing it’s a rhetorical misstep and at the same time suggesting it need not be called out. Huge pet peeve of mine is when these little flourishes derail an entire discussion because they aren’t really true but get the sympathetic individuals involved all riled up. If the device isn’t positively contributing it should be identified and dismissed.
It only 'derails' anything if someone decides to pedantidunk on it. That's not conversation. The occasional flight of verbal fancy is, though. 'Calling out' completely mundane things about other people's comments demolishes forums which is why the site docs and zillions of mod comments exhort you not to do it.
In addition, your experience and this statement aren't mutually exclusive. As for evidence: political developments in the EU and America(s), including the US, as well as policy changes by some of the wealthiest, claiming-to-be-freedom-loving platform owners on earth, should provide enough hints not to dismiss this claim outright.
I don't know where you lived, but you are surely familiar with the related trope in regards to Democracy: the more of it in a country's name, the less of a democracy it will be.
You could also simply look at current events to understand the turn of phrase: Elon Musk, proud "free speech absolutist" bans Twitter accounts which criticize him, bans posts with the word "cisgender", and has manipulated the algorithm to prioritize his own posts.
It's certainly true of the Republican party in the US. They proclaim to be defenders of freedom of speech, yet have passed the vast majority of bills censoring books in educational institutions.
Musk is a glaringly obvious example. But also basically the entire GOP fits, as well (they all screamed free speech in response to fact checkers only to do this "anti-woke" silencing)
I'll just pick one quote: "There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society."
Also this in relation to his book: A section of the book favoring exclusion of democrats and homosexuals from society.
This is not the kind of person that is arguing for free speech on its own merits. In fact he's asking for the opposite of free speech. He wants to choose who has the freedom to speak and who doesn't.
Nitpick: it can be if you redefine numbers and/or operations. Math is not science (but is used as a basis for science) and you can yourself redefine what 2, 5, + and = mean, and use that new set accordingly. Just like you can make "Sky is green" true if your redefine what either "Sky", "is", or "green" mean - language is also not science so it can be redefined.
Wow, this is such a concise description of what has been going on with the far right in the US and Europe for the last decade! I'm glad to finally have a name for it. Thanks!
I think your strongest venue to keeping it (short of a civil war) is organizing in labor unions. Because individuals are easy to control but nothing focuses the minds of billionaire elites like a full general strike with no end in sight.
> I think your strongest venue to keeping it (short of a civil war) is organizing in labor unions.
US labor unions have been systematically weakened for decades, though, so that's not a very good chance. Labor organizing can do powerful things, but it doesn't tend to work overnight on the scale needed.
I said this is the strongest venue, not that it is a strong venue.
This crisis is not going to get solved by individuals. The route for individuals to take is infiltration and nudging of the two parties from within — but that is not general advice you can give to everybody, it takes a certain kind of individual to do that. E.g. if you are a person like AOC, trying to replace you Dem representative would be a very good venue to help the cause.
But most people aren't that politically capable or stubborn to run (they rather complain about politicians than mame those decisions themselves).
So outside of that it takes organizations to take stances. Organized labour, churches, other kinds of groups that can turn out in big numbers.
> I knew a few Rep voters who went like "Project 2025 is not affiliated with Trump, and even if, that's good, because fuck the LGBT"
> * last part added by me, but that's how their attitude was...
I think the problem is one of a non-united grouping - Most people are accepting of L, G and B, but not T.
The actual L and G friends I have (Don't have any B friends; or if I do, I don't know about it) individually try to distance themselves from the T.
There would have been much less for Trump to mudsling on if the opposition simply dropped support for T while keeping L, G and B.
Having LGBT as a single block that you are either for or against is stupid because while most people would be either neutral or positive about L, G and B, the clear majority of people are not neutral on the proposals from the T camp.
There is no right to pronouns or to being referred to in whatever way you want. In fact, policing that kind of thing is an infringement on other people's right to free speech either.
There is no right to expensive surgeries either, especially cosmetic ones.
There is also no right to deciding which bathroom you get to go to.
Please be precise which rights you think are "human rights" and why.
> You don’t have to use pronouns if you don’t want to.
I'm pretty certain that that is not true. Language policing was a big problem - "use the wrong pronoun and lose your job" is not a meaningful choice to many people.
I ran into several young Trump voters after the election that adamantly believed he would just improve the economy. “All that Project 2025 stuff was a smokescreen.”
I think the emperor's new clothes is not a fitting comparison at all. Everyone could see the emperor was naked, they just thought they were the only ones. As soon as there was a second voice confirming what they saw, the illusion crumbled. But trump voters are so far off the deep end, the smoke screens so elaborate, that they _actually_ see the fine garments.
I'm not sure that's true for most of them. Most seem to love a naked king as long as he's "hurting the right people". The cruelty is the point for them, but they don't understand that he also doesn't care about them so long as he's getting high on the damage he's causing everyone, which is what his well-known malignant narcicissm demands.
Retraction isn’t censorship, and bans on what you can publish at work as part of your job are not restraints on your individual right to free expression.
> In the order, CDC researchers were instructed to remove references to or mentions of a list of forbidden terms: “Gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female,” according to an email sent to CDC employees (see below).”
So yep, censorship. Any article that even _mentions_ LGBT (e.g. for epidemiological reasons) is now prohibited to be even referenced.
By that logic, is the term Baptist or Hindu scientifically sound? Is the term string theory? Is the term working class ? What makes words or terminology scientifically sound that doesn't apply here?
It sounds like someone disagrees with the underlying identity that individuals ascribe themselves and now anyone who do research using these identities is censored. You don't have to endorse (or even fully understand) a phenomena to research it. Arguably those are some of the most interesting research questions.
This argument doesn't hold water when the left does it, and it doesn't hold water in this instance either. Censorship does not only mean government infringement upon freedom of individual expression.
This Executive Order states in part: “Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.
… Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to: (a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;
(b) ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen; …
Sec. 3. Ending Censorship of Protected Speech. (a) No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to section 2 of this order.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/rest...