Trump officials target gender ideology: Health data, entire pages wiped out, ‘Page you’re looking for was not found’

Federal agencies took swift action on Friday to comply with a new directive linked to President Donald Trump's executive order rolling back protections for transgender people. Public health data disappeared from websites, entire webpages went blank and employees erased pronouns from email signatures Friday.

This came after the Office of Personnel Management issued a memo on Wednesday, directing agency heads to remove "gender ideology" from websites, contracts, and emails. The changes were required to be implemented 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.

When asked by reporters 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, but added, “I don’t know. That doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.”

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; a set of government surveys showing transgender students suffering higher rates of depression, drug use, bullying and other problems.

For instance, if you search for “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website contraception guidance”, it shows the following image.

In another example, in another CDC page of ‘lessons on building supportive school environments for transgender and nonbinary kids’, the website now displays this image.

Experts express concern

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.

Meanwhile, Trump's executive order, signed on his first day back in office, calls for the federal government to define sex as only male or female and for that to be reflected on official documents such as passports and policies such as federal prison assignments.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the military to immediately stop recognizing identity a day before the start of February's Black History Month, saying they “erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.”

(With all inputs from Reuters)