Public health data disappeared from websites, entire webpages went blank and employees erased pronouns from email signatures Friday as federal agencies scrambled to comply with a directive tied to President Donald Trump’s order rolling back protections for transgender people.
The Office of Personnel Management directed agency heads to strip “gender ideology” from websites, contracts and emails in a memo sent Wednesday, with changes ordered to be instituted by 5 p.m. Friday. It also directed agencies to disband employee resource groups, terminate grants and contracts related to the issue, and replace the term “gender” with “sex” on government forms.
Some parts of government websites appeared with the message “The page you’re looking for was not found.” Some pages disappeared and came back intermittently.
Asked by reporters Friday about reports that government websites were being shut down to eliminate mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion, Trump said he didn’t know anything about it but that he’d endorse such a move.
“I don’t know. That doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me,” Trump said, adding that he campaigned promising to stamp out such initiatives.
Much public health information was taken down from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website: contraception guidance; a fact sheet about HIV and transgender people; lessons on building supportive school environments for transgender and nonbinary kids; details about National Transgender HIV Testing Day; and a set of government surveys showing transgender students suffering higher rates of depression, drug use, bullying and other problems.
Eliminating health resources creates dangerous gaps in scientific information, disease experts said. The Infectious Diseases Society of America, a medical association, issued a statement decrying the removal of information about HIV and people who are transgender. Access is “critical to efforts to end the HIV epidemic,” the organization’s leaders said.
A Bureau of Prisons web page originally titled “Inmate Gender” was relabeled “Inmate Sex” on Friday. A breakdown of transgender inmates in federal prisons was no longer included.
The State Department on Friday removed the option to select “X” as a gender on passport applications for nonbinary applicants. It also replaced the word “gender” from the descriptor with the word “sex.” Nonetheless, the online passport application form was no longer available late Friday, linking simply to a message that said the system was “undergoing maintenance.”
All State Department employees were ordered to remove gender-specific pronouns from their email signatures. The directive, from the acting head of the Bureau of Management, said this was required to comply with Trump’s executive orders and the department was also removing all references to “gender ideology” from websites and internal documents.
“All employees are required to remove any gender identifying pronouns from email signature blocks by 5:00 PM today,” said the order from Tibor Nagy. “Your cooperation is essential as we navigate these changes together.”
An official from the U.S. Agency for International Development said staffers were directed to flag the use of the word “gender” in each of thousands of award contracts. Warnings against gender discrimination are standard language in every such contract. The official spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, under a Trump administration gag order prohibiting USAID staffers from speaking with people outside their agency.
The official said staffers fear that programs and jobs related to inclusion efforts, gender issues and issues specific to women are being singled out and possibly targeted under two Trump executive orders.
Some Census Bureau and National Park Service pages were also inaccessible or giving error messages.
