The “Defending Women” Executive Order, Ezell’s Memo, and the Archiving of Government Websites in the First Day of Deregulatory Excess
Fortunately, researchers have been archiving government websites for months. This is usual with every change, but this was even more important with Donald Trump’s return to office. During the first round of deregulatory sprees, access to as many as 20% of the Environmental Protection Agency’s website was removed. And now, it seems, similar moves are happening fast.
The “Defending Women” executive order, and Ezell’s resulting memo, go well beyond policing information on government websites. Agencies were told to review their programs, contracts, and grants to make sure they didn’t promote gender ideology and to make sure that forms don’t ask for sex.
On Friday, however, many pages that did not seem related to “gender” or “diversity” had also been taken down, such as AtlasPlus, an interactive tool from CDC with surveillance data on HIV, viral hepatitis, STDs and TB. A page about HIV testing is missing. The CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, a tool that assesses community resilience in the event of natural disaster was also taken down.
35 Years of Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (OPM): Where are the latest trends in mental health? How does the epidemic in young people’s lives get worse?
The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System tracks key metrics on nutrition, physical activity, tobacco and drug use, sexual behavior and other areas. 35 years ago, the program was created and contains a survey researchers rely on to measure how behaviors influence health and design prevention measures
Russell says that much of the data about the crisis in youth mental health comes from this survey.
“OPM sent guidance to agencies to remove gender ideology-related content from their websites by 5 pm today as part of the efforts to defend women and uphold the truth of biological sex against the radical claims of gender activists,” OPM communications director McLaurine Pinover said in a statement Friday evening. The plan isn’t to shut down the government websites who weren’t able to comply but instead to continue to implement this important effort.
For the first time in the survey, students were asked about “transgender identity”. There was a survey that showed that 3% of high school students were not sure about being trans.
The archive for the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report still contains the studies that contain overviews of the survey results.
“I’m giving a talk today where I’m going to cite some of the latest data on mental health,” said Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, a developmental psychologist at Stanford University, “But is this larger than just the website being down? Are they stopping the data collection? Are they stopping the reporting?”
The NPR investigation of the “denial of intimate spaces” memo by the U.S. Department of Human Resources and the Office of Census Bureau
The memo calls for agencies to make sure that “intimate spaces are designated by biological sex and not gender identity” as this could mean that the employees of the non-biological genders will not be allowed in the bathrooms they use. The NPR reached out for clarity on which “intimate spaces” would be considered.
Trump said it didn’t sound like a bad idea to remove “DeI” information from websites. DEI would ruin our country, and now it’s dead.
While “gender ideology” is sharply defined, Trump and other transgender rights opponents have used the phrase to argue against the idea that people can identify with a gender that does not match the sex they were assigned at birth.
There were examples of basic information disappearing from government websites that were spread on social media. The data on HIV was lost, according to a scientist at University of Pennsylvania. Cynthia Cox of KFF pointed out that the CDC’s Youth Risk Survey data is no longer accessible.
As of late Friday, attempting to reach the Census Bureau’s 2020 Results page returned a message that that part of the site was down for maintenance. Along with other pages, it had a page down on sexual orientation and gender identity.
On the Disappearance of the CDC Social Vulnerability and Environmental Justice Index in the United States during the Biden Era
is a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home , a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals.
There were warnings on social media about the impending purge at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and calls to save as much data as possible. The CDC shares data on a wide range of topics, from chronic diseases to traffic injuries, tobacco use, vaccinations, and pregnancies in the US — and it’s just one of the agencies in the crosshairs.
The CDC’s social vulnerability and environmental justice index have been taken offline over the past week. In 2007, during the Bush administration, social scientists, geographers, and statisticians started developing the social vulnerability index (SVI), which incorporated demographic and socioeconomic factors including poverty, race, and ethnicity over the years.
The Biden administration launched the environmental justice index (EJI) in 2022. Low-income communities and communities of color are among the groups most impacted by pollution in our nation. Meeting the needs of these communities requires our focused attention and we will use the Environmental Justice Index to do just that,” then Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a press release at the time.
He said that climate extremism has caused inflation and made businesses too expensive to regulate. There was a 40 percent decline in the term ‘climate change’ on websites for federal environmental agencies during his first term. It is too early to know what the damage might be, but some websites have already disappeared. The US Department of Transport removed pages about climate andsustainability from their site. It follows an internal memo sent this week instructing USDOT operating administrations to identify and ultimately “terminate” Biden-era activities relating to climate change and DEI.
Donald Trump’s efforts to limit foreign aid seem to have also led to information being taken down on HIV and AIDS. The data page was taken down this week. PEPFAR has been around since 2003 and helped more than 20.6 million people get access to antiretroviral therapy in 2024 alone, according to a snapshot of the website taken by the Wayback Machine on January 26th, before it was taken down.
The End of Term Web Archive project has saved content on federal government websites during every presidential transition since 2008. The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative formed after Trump was elected because they wanted to document changes to government websites and make archive data available elsewhere. It has backed up data from the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index and Environmental Justice Index and shared it on a webpage for The Public Environmental Data Project.
Aging datasets might not fully represent what’s actually happening on the ground, so people have to be careful about how they use them, Pisut points out. He says it could be risky, but it is better than nothing.