More than 8,000 web pages from across the government have been taken down as President Donald Trump demands the federal workforce comply with his new orders destroying diversity, gender and equality initiatives.
Many of the webpages contained information about ‘climate’ initiatives or ‘transgender’ care.
Trump’s order has seen web pages from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Census Bureau, the Food and Drug Administration, the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Veterans Affairs and many more agencies go dark, a New York Times analysis found.
‘CDC’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders,’ it says at the top of one of its pages.
‘Sorry — we can’t find that page,’ reads one web page that is supposed to outline LGBTQ veteran care.
The pages appear to be related to Trump’s executive order, which had a 5 pm Friday deadline, to terminate any programs that promote ‘gender ideology.’
Thousands of government web pages went dark after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to terminate any programs that promote ‘gender ideology’
It’s unclear if the pages will be returned with edits or have been permanently banished to the darkness of the web.
For a time on Friday evening, the entire Census.gov website returned an error message. Many pages have returned online but its page on sexual orientation and gender identity was still down.
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The scrubs come after the Office of Personnel Management sent a two-page memo Wednesday demanding all heads of government agencies comply with measures to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
That memo laid out ‘steps to end federal funding of gender ideology.’
The included the order to ‘take down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that inculcate or promote gender ideology.’
Trump also ordered federal employees to remove their pronouns from their email signatures.
And he required all federal agencies to ‘recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.’
As part of that order, Secretary of State Marco Rubio suspended passport applications that use a gender-neutral marker such as ‘X.’
Then-President Joe Biden changed the passport process in a way that allowed allowed nonbinary, intersex or gender-nonconforming people to use an X designation rather than male or female.
When asked Friday about the removal of ‘DEI’ information from websites, Trump said, ‘It doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me. DEI would have ruined our country, and now it’s dead.’
A webpage on the Veterans Affairs website related to LGBTQ care remains off line
Many government websites are being edited
The president also signed signed an executive order aimed at restricting gender care for people under the age of 19.
He announced federal support for such care would end and he called on the Health and Human Services secretary to ‘take all appropriate actions to end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children’.
The order said it was referring to treatments including puberty blockers, hormones such as oestrogen or testosterone, as well surgical procedures.
Many of Trump’s orders are expected to be challenged in court.