The Trump administration plans to pause some federal government websites in order to remove content contrary to the president’s thinking, administration officials told CBS News.
Word spread quickly throughout Washington that action would be taken to change federal websites.
Politico reported earlier in the day that Agriculture Department employees had been ordered to delete landing pages on climate change across agency websites, according to an internal email, and the directive had come from the USDA’s communications office.
Multiple officials from health departments and nonprofits receiving federal funding say they’ve been told to scrub mentions of gender and equity from their programs, in order to comply with President Trump’s executive order this week, CBS News confirmed. Reuters first reported this directive.
It’s unclear how health departments and nonprofits would be able to comply with the sweeping instructions in many situations, especially given many health programs were explicitly designed to overcome equity gaps or diseases that have disproportionately affected transgender people.
One local health official said that Trump administration officials had said over the long term, grantees might also need to comply with the federal order banning pronouns in email signatures, which had initially been thought to extend only to federal staff.
Letters obtained by CBS News sent to grant recipients cite the “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs” and “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism” executive orders for the sweeping instructions.
President Trump, asked by reporters in the Oval Office Friday if websites would be shut down to remove diversity-related content, replied, “If they want to scrub the websites, that’s OK with me.”