Vaccine information, transgender references disappear from US government websites
US officials have removed internet pages containing references to gender identity and diversity following Trump administration orders.
References to gender identity and information on some vaccines have disappeared from federal websites as US officials acted on a Trump administration order to scrub communications and programs.
The administration instructed agencies in a January 29 memo to end all “programs that use taxpayer money to promote or reflect gender ideology’’.
Agencies were told to terminate such programs and disable websites by 5pm Friday local time that “inculcate or promote gender ideology’’.
Officials raced to comply. At the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, teams scoured web pages for words the agency had been instructed to remove including “transgender”, “nonbinary”, “inclusivity” and “gender’’, according to people familiar with the matter. The CDC’s policy office told staff that “he’’, “she” and “sex” were acceptable words.
More than 1000 pages that had been visible on Friday were missing from websites for the CDC, National Institutes of Health and Department of Health and Human Services, a Wall Street Journal analysis showed.
Some of the removed CDC pages contained information about vaccine recommendations. The pages taken down contained material from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices, which advises the agency on vaccine recommendations.
Agencies took down web pages that contained the acronym LGBTQ, the “T” in which stands for transgender. A page on the Bureau of Consular Affairs’ website that had offered travel guidance to “LGBTQI+” travellers was updated to refer to “LGB” travellers.
The National Archives said it was removing gender references from internal tools including its internship application and training platform.
The State Department is “reviewing all agency programs, contracts, and grants that promote or inculcate gender ideology, and we are removing outward facing media that does the same’’, wrote Tibor Nagy, who is acting as the department’s management chief. “Your compliance is essential as we navigate these changes together.”
Federal employees, including at the CDC, National Archives and State Department, received emails instructing them to remove signature lines that included their pronouns.
President Donald Trump said in the Oval Office that he supported the changes. “If they want to scrub the websites that’s good with me,” he said.
Several CDC web pages devoted to information about HIV were down, including one on “Ending the HIV Epidemic in the US”. One web page titled Fast Facts: HIV and Transgender People that was live on Friday morning wasn’t available by early afternoon. The page had contained data showing transgender people to be disproportionately at risk of HIV infection.
“Social and structural issues – such as HIV stigma, homophobia, discrimination, poverty, and limited access to high-quality healthcare – influence health outcomes and continue to drive inequities,” the page had said.
Webpages also went offline with information about the CDC’s Youth Risk Behaviour Survey and its related national surveillance system, which monitors health-risk behaviours among teenagers. The survey since 2023 asked teens whether they identified as transgender.
The CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health, which runs the surveillance system, took down most of its pages because it couldn’t comply with the administration’s order in time, a person with knowledge of the situation said. CDC pages describing pregnant “people” that included information on safer food choices and risks from respiratory viruses were also offline.
Other web pages that went dark included one on “CDC’s Efforts to Address Racism as a Fundamental Driver of Health Disparities,” which references “inequities” and “diversity’’.
It lists public-health efforts such as scholarship and fellowship programs for students in public health and minority health.
Scientific journal articles that have been submitted or accepted but not published shouldn’t be published “if they do not align with” the executive order, CDC employees were told in an email.
A National Cancer Institute web page titled Transgender Inclusion in Cancer Research was up in December but wasn’t working as of January 24. The page had said that transgender people might be at higher risk for cancers related to viral infections and that risks related to long-term use of high-dose oestrogen or testosterone remain unknown.
Webpages that made a case to scientists to include sex and gender in health research went offline last week at the women’s health research office at the NIH.
Brianna Abbott, Nidhi Subbaraman, Rebecca Ballhaus and Alex Ward contributed to this article.
The Wall Street Journal
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