Public health information related to LGBTQ care and to HIV was scrubbed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website Friday as the agency seeks to comply with President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive orders.
The CDC’s main HIV page was still accessible as of Saturday afternoon, although a disclaimer at the top states that the agency’s website “is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.” Pages that previously contained HIV data — including resources for health care providers, information on racial disparities and data on transgender people, gay and bisexual men — have been removed and remain unavailable as of this writing.
The agency also took down its pages on LGBTQ care, including those containing data about suicide rates among LGBTQ youth. A page with information on food safety for pregnant people was also removed.
CDC employees were informed in a memo this week that they are barred from promoting “gender ideology” and to begin removing all public-facing media that might “inculcate or promote” such concepts by Friday afternoon. The term “gender ideology” is one that the advocacy organization GLAAD calls “a malicious rhetorical construct that falsely asserts that LGBTQ — notably trans — people are an ideological movement rather than an intrinsic identity.”
One government staffer told NBC News that CDC officials struggled with implementing the policy and “began pulling down numerous HIV-related webpages — regardless of whether it included gender — rushing to meet the deadline.”
It’s unclear whether the CDC might restore the webpages at a later date, and if so, how the information might be presented differently. In his first week in office, Trump signed executive orders, essentially, to prohibit the government from recognizing transgender people and to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion policies in federal agencies. The Defense Intelligence Agency, which is part of the Pentagon, announced on Friday that all activities and events related to “special observances,” such as Black History Month, Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, National American Indian Heritage Month and Holocaust Remembrance Day, will be halted to comply with Trump’s anti-diversity order. When asked by a reporter on Friday about government websites being scrubbed of information even tangentially related to race or gender, Trump pleaded ignorance but said it “doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.” “DEI would’ve ruined our country and now it’s dead … So if they want to scrub the websites, that’s OK with me.” Trump said, adding that the “real leaders” in the military are “very happy about it.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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