Joe Biden.Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty
When PresidentJoe Bidentook office last month, changes came not only in thetall stack of executive orderswaiting on his desk in those initial weeks but also in how the new administration worded them.
ANew York TimesreportWednesday recaps the efforts the Biden administration has made to shift the federal government from language and word choices used duringDonald Trump’s administration.
Among the changes? The phrase “Climate Change” is back in use.
“I release you!” Melissa Schwartz, the Interior Department’s communications director, reportedly wrote in a recent email to her staff, allowing them to again use the phrase, which had fallen out of favor under the former president,a noted skepticof the scientific consensus on man-made climate change.
“The words we choose are critical and set the tone,” Schwartz told theTimes.
“The president has been clear to all of us — words matter, tone matters and civility matters,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told theTimes. “And bringing the country together, getting back our seat at the global table means turning the page from the actions but also the divisive and far too often xenophobic language of the last administration.”
President Joe Biden.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty
Last week, children’s author Aída Salazar, who immigrated as a young child with her parents to the U.S. from Mexico,toldTheLos Angeles Times: “We have to do everything we can to minimize the destructive nature of language in the politics that’s been used against immigrants to criminalize them.”
The goal of removing “destructive” language from the federal government’s lexicon has been influencing similar changes across government websites and legal documents since hours after Biden, 78, became president.
Shortly after he and Vice PresidentKamala Harris, 56, took their oaths of office, the new administration began rewording and redesigning websites for federal agencies, as well as the White House, to reinforce the contrast of their priorities with the previous administration.
On the official White House website, NPRreportedthe Biden administration began asking for guests' preferred pronouns on sign-up sheets — in a gesture of LGBTQ inclusion — including the option to choose gender neutral pronouns like “they/them” and “Mx.”
The administration also relaunched the White House’s Spanish-languagewebsite, after the Trump administration had taken it down.
Matlintold PEOPLE last yearshe thought it was “unfathomable” the Trump administration would actively ignore the deaf community’s request for accurate translations, especially in the midst of the global health crisis.
“At the end of the day,” she said, explaining calls for the White House to make the change. “We refuse to go backwards.”
source: people.com
