Government websites mentioning gender and diversity began disappearing Friday, replaced by the phrase “The page you are looking for can’t be found.”
Among the first webpages to come down were in the health sphere.
The Centers for Disease Control page containing data on health disparities among LGBTQ youth and other information supportive of gender diversity came up empty around midday Friday. It redirected visitors to the agency’s archive, but many of the links to archived information were also dead, including a topic page titled “Transgender and Gender Diverse Persons.”
A National Institutes of Health webpage on sex, gender and drug use showed a two-word message: “Access denied.”
Other CDC pages and datasets on topics including COVID-19 and AIDS were still functional, but some AIDs-related pages were missing, including the “Let’s Stop HIV Together” page. The CDC didn’t immediately respond to a request for information Friday.
Enacting Trump’s social agenda
The takedowns appeared to respond to memos earlier this week and last week from the Office of Personnel Management directing federal agencies to carry out President Donald Trump’s executive orders and reshape the government’s messaging on issues from gender identity to workforce diversity.
The memos ordered agencies to dismantle websites and social media accounts that “inculcate or promote gender ideology” or that refer to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Offices – by 5 p.m. ET Friday.
More:Trump order recognizes only two sexes. Advocates call it ‘cruel,’ ‘lawless.’
The Office of Personnel Management directives operationalize an executive order Trump signed his first day titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
In the order, Trump wrote that “the erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system” – a claim advocates and parents of gender diverse children and adults strongly refute.
It’s typical for presidential administrations to rebuild agency websites to reflect their priorities, though in the past, the content from prior administrations could still be found online in archived form.
“This is more than just the norm,” said Faith Williams, policy director at the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight. “It’s very normal to see websites change over. This is much bigger than that because the ask is so huge. Agencies are being asked to scrub every reference to gender.”
The White House and NIH did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is a developing story.
