U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as he signs an executive order in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., Jan. 31, 2025.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
Some government webpages briefly went dark Friday after federal agencies were told to comply with a White House order on removing certain language pertaining to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Pages for the Federal Aviation Administration, the Census Bureau and the Justice Department were among those that went blank. The FAA and Justice Department later came back online.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order this week that stated only the genders male and female are to be recognized by the federal government. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) distributed a memo, obtained by NBC News, ordering that all federal government references to “gender ideology” be removed by 5 p.m. Friday.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the duration of any website changes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it removed its data portal to satisfy Trump administration orders. The data page will eventually return, the CDC said.
A notice on the data homepage said: “Data.CDC.gov is temporarily offline in order to comply with Executive Order 14168 Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government and the OPM notice dated January 29, 2025, ‘Initial Guidance Regarding President Trump’s Executive Order Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government (Defending Women).”
“The website will resume operations once in compliance,” the notice said.
The Trump administration has already removed dozens of webpages across federal health agencies, including many at the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.
The main HIV page, a hub for HIV data, resources for health care providers, pages on racial disparities, another on transgender people, gay and bisexual men, and information about ongoing youth risk behaviors and details about the federal “Ending the HIV Epidemic” plan were scrubbed by Friday.
Also down on Friday were several webpages for the U.S. Agency for International Development, tasked with administering foreign, distributing medicine abroad and helping to thwart disease outbreaks.
At the same time, federal employees were working to comply with orders prohibiting the support of DEI efforts within the military and across civilian agencies, including the elimination of resource groups and any celebration of cultural awareness, according to memos and emails.
The Health and Human Services web destination reproductiverights.gov, which contained information on reproductive care, including abortion, is among the destination pages that were removed.
The CDC began removing content related to gender identity on Friday, according to one government staffer. HIV-related pages were apparently caught up in that action.
A Wednesday email from Charles Ezell, the acting director of the U.S. office of personnel management, titled “Defending Women,” told subordinates not to promote “gender ideology” — a term often used by conservative groups to describe what they consider “woke” views on sex and gender.
The email said the employees are to recognize only two sexes, male and female, according to a memo, obtained by NBC News.
Among the CDC pages missing on Friday was one with information on contraception and emergency contraception. Information on contraception and the abortion pill, or mifepristone tablets, can still be found on CDC webpages through more detailed searches, but those main landing pages have been made to appear blank and might halt users seeking more background on the topics.
In a December interview, Trump said he “probably” would not restrict the availability of medication abortions during his second term in the White House.
