One morning you awake to find that the words you’ve always known—the words that shape your thoughts and help you make sense of the world—have started to vanish. In early 2025, as President Trump stepped back into office, a quiet yet profound campaign began. It wasn’t a campaign of policy shifts or high-profile firings alone; it was a secret operation targeting the very language of government. Overnight, hundreds of words—words like “diversity,” “inclusion,” “gender identity,” “climate crisis,” and even “mental health”—were systematically scrubbed from federal websites, internal documents, and government memos. A New York Times investigation on March 7, 2025, revealed that many federal agencies had drawn up lists of these so-called “problematic” words. Some departments even advised their staff to avoid them altogether, and in grant proposals, the use of such words could lead to outright rejection.
At first, this might seem like a minor tweak or an overzealous attempt at political correctness. But as the story unfolded, it became clear that this was no accidental oversight. It was a deliberate effort—a form of linguistic warfare designed to reshape how Americans think and speak about reality. There is something eerily suspenseful about the way language, that most basic building block of democracy, was being altered right before our eyes. The stakes were high: when words vanish, so too do the stories, struggles, and truths they once conveyed.
In a way, the developments recalled the dystopian visions of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. In Orwell’s 1984, the government invents “Newspeak,” a language with a shrinking vocabulary that leaves no room for rebellious thought. Orwell warned, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” When key phrases such as “systemic racism,” “gender-based violence,” or even “pronouns” are erased from official documents, it isn’t merely about cleaning up jargon—it’s about stripping away the ability to name injustice and challenging the status quo. With no words to express grievances, how can one even begin to question or confront oppression?