[thedays]

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.”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/rest...

[theptip]

It seems fairly clear that free speech does not apply to government employees acting in their official duty.

The order is concerned with government censoring private individuals.

[blotfaba]

It does feel like some straight "war is peace" kind of, uh.. shenanigangs and things

[freitasm]

No one (inside the government) probably considers that EO to be valid. It's just for "the others".

[atoav]

You think laws still count with an immune president who has packed the supreme court and DOJ?

Laws don't count with Don, conventions don't count, rules don't count. The only thing that counts is power.

And he has it now.

[immibis]

I believe this is called doublespeak due to George Orwell, and many fascist dictatorships do it.

[hyperbrainer]

Standard doublespeak.

[e40]

If you understand the language wasn’t English bit Newspeak, then it makes perfect sense.

[jasonlotito]

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.

[AnthonyMouse]

> 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.

[tsimionescu]

> 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.

[foxglacier]

Based on what? It sounds like you've got carried away imagining things.

[tsimionescu]

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?

[GeneralMayhem]

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.

[dinkumthinkum]

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.

[GeneralMayhem]

> what does the left mean by "free speech".

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.

[nixosbestos]

> so does the left believe we cannot say scientific facts about biology?

I'm dying to know what this fact is, and if you spent even 30 seconds looking up what the current state of science is with regards to it.

[nixosbestos]

man, fuck this site, I forgot how many transphobes there are here with their heads up their asses.

I want to know if you downvoted with zero consideration, or if you looked it up and then downvoted me to assist in your delusional denial.

[KaiserPro]

This is my thought exactly. If you are requiring re-working of papers to exclude certain words, that sounds like censorship to me.

[duxup]

Generally when it comes to Trump it is rhetoric indicating the opposite.

He complains about a bias government, to install his own loyalists.

Same goes for science.

Rule of law…

[ballooney]

_biased_ is the adjective, bias is a noun.

[smcl]

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

[tanewishly]

Maybe, but in an online forum where many people use input with autocorrect, it might simply be the autocorrect.

(Yes it happened to this message as well, but too egregious to leave as an example).

[TeMPOraL]

"biased government" = government that is biased

"bias government" = government that is about bias, in some way, e.g. obsessed about it

[ballooney]

+3 to -3. I will continue to shout at the tide. In the age of trump we must consistently and patiently push back against all the wrongness.

[toast0]

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.

[jcranmer]

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.

[rhinoceraptor]

[flagged]

[pizza]

The more re-truths it gets, the truther it is..

[rhinoceraptor]

2+2=5

[zekica]

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.

[dcow]

That is so not the point. The point of 2+2=5 is that white science is bad and needs to be dismantled because it’s structurally racist.

[vinni2]

If only millions of American's knew he would do that when they voted for him and supported him. They still do I don’t think they care.

[jfengel]

They care very much. They think it's great.

[eastbound]

It seems like behavior matters.

[userbinator]

Someone should tell him about it then...

[sneak]

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.

[cyberax]

> 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.

[bigstrat2003]

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.

[baran1]

lookup the word censorship