After federal agencies were instructed to follow a White House directive to remove specific wording related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, certain government websites were momentarily offline on Friday.
Among the pages that went blank were those for the Justice Department, the Census Bureau, and the Federal Aviation Administration. Later, the Justice Department and FAA returned to the internet.
This week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order stating that the federal government should only recognize the male and female genders. By 5 p.m. Friday, all federal government references to gender ideology must be eliminated, according to a letter published by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that NBC News was able to get.
A request for comment on how long such website changes would last was not immediately answered by the White House.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it shut down its data portal in compliance with directives from the Trump administration. According to the CDC, the data page will ultimately be back up.
A notice on the data homepage stated: “Data.CDC.gov is temporarily offline in order to comply withExecutive Order 14168Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Governmentand the OPM notice dated January 29, 2025, ‘Initial Guidance Regarding President Trump s Executive OrderDefending Womenfrom Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government (Defending Women).”
“The website will resume operations once in compliance,” the warning stated.
Numerous websites of federal health agencies, including the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health, have already been taken down by the Trump administration.
By Friday, the main HIV page, a center for HIV data, health care provider resources, racial disparities sites, a transgender page, a gay and bisexual man page, information about ongoing risk behaviors among kids, and material about the government Ending the HIV Epidemic strategy had been wiped.
Several websites belonging to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is responsible for sending medication overseas and preventing disease outbreaks, were also taken down on Friday.
According to memoranda and emails, federal personnel were simultaneously trying to comply with directives that forbade the support of DEI initiatives both within the military and across civilian organizations. These orders included the removal of resource groups and any celebration of cultural awareness.
Among the destination sites eliminated was the Health and Human Services website, reproductiverights.gov, which offered information on reproductive care, including abortion.
According to one federal employee, the CDC started eliminating gender identity-related content on Friday. It seems that pages pertaining to HIV were included in that activity.
Charles Ezell, the acting director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, warned colleagues in an email titled “Defending Women” on Wednesday not to spread gender ideology, a phrase conservative groups sometimes use to characterize what they perceive to be awakened views on sex and gender.
According to a memo that NBC News was able to get, the email stated that staff members are only expected to identify the male and female sexes.
contraceptive and emergency contraceptive information was one of the CDC pages that was absent on Friday.Although more thorough searches can still find information on CDC websites about contraception and the abortion pill, or mifepristone tablets, those primary landing pages have been designed to look blank, which may deter visitors who are looking for further information on the subjects.
During his second term in office, Trump stated in a December interview that he most likely would not impose restrictions on the availability of medication abortions.