The U.S. Forest Service’s “Sustainability and Climate” web page is gone, as are the news sections for the homepages of Alaska’s national forests and the Tongass National Forest. Likewise for a vast amount of federal government weather, disaster assistance, fisheries, health, education and other reports.
In some instances they can still be accessed through submenus or via virtual backdoors such as the exact URL for a specific report. In others, the information has simply halted — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report was last updated Jan. 16 and the top of the website now displays a banner stating “CDC’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.”
“More than 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen U.S. government websites have been taken down” since Jan. 31, The New York Times reported on Feb. 2. The mass removal is occurring “as federal agencies rush to heed President Trump’s orders targeting diversity initiatives and ‘gender ideology.’”
Other websites still online have been altered to remove references to diversity, gender, climate change and other information, the Washington Post reported.
Both newspapers, as well as other media organizations, noted website changes are common when a new president takes office. However, the reports also note the magnitude and content singled out by the Trump administration is unprecedented.
Many federal websites with content targeted by the Trump administration are still active. The Department of Interior’s website, for instance, appeared largely intact as of Feb. 2 — including a reference to “environmental justice” on its “about” page — although the word “diverse” has been deleted from the description of the department’s museum collections.
Administration officials have stated that at least some pages may be restored once they are scrutinized for content that violates Trump’s orders.
The Forest Service’s “Sustainability and Climate” website, for instance, on Feb. 2 displayed only the text “You are not authorized to access this page.” A Wayback Machine archived snapshot from Jan. 17 highlights items such as a “Forest Service Climate Adoption Plan” and “Vulnerability Assessments Across the Nation.”
Among the deleted items is a “National Climate Resilience Framework” assessment that stated the priority for data collection “should be focused on enhancing information and services in geographies where climate data are sparse and climate-related vulnerabilities are high (e.g., Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. territories),” and that the government is “supporting relocation activities for 14 rural Alaskan villages and Tribes through the Natural Resource Conservation Service Watershed and Flood Prevention Operations Program.”
The Forest Service’s websites for Alaska and the Tongass each had “Recent News” sections on their homepages leading up to Inauguration Day. Those sections are now gone.
Also vanishing from easy access — but potentially still available in submenus and other indirect means — are vast portions of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s websites. That department oversees agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (which includes weather, climate and fisheries agencies), Bureau of the Census, Minority Business Development Agency, and others.
Both the NOAA.gov and Climate.gov websites were operational while the Commerce Department site was down, each featuring plentiful content related to climate change including an article noting: “2024 was the world’s warmest year on record.”
However, alterations have been made to the website of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The “priorities” section has been removed from FEMA’s homepage, which on Jan. 19 included subsections about “equity” and “climate resilience.” The direct URL to FEMA’s strategic plan detailing its priorities now returns an “access denied” message.
The U.S. Department of Education, which Trump has stated he wants to eliminate, has removed large portions of its website including a “White House Initiative American Indian and Alaska Native Education” section.
A more general deletion from the Department of Education website was a resource page for LGBTQ+ students, matching one of the most widespread purges across federal sites involving gender and sexuality references — especially involving transgenderism.
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