Beginning in January 2025, a series of web page and dataset deletions and modifications across multiple United States federal agencies began. Immediately following executive orders from President Donald Trump's administration, government organizations removed or modified over 8,000 web pages and approximately 3,000 datasets. The changes primarily affected content related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, gender identity, public health research, environmental policy, and various social programs, and other topics Trump and the Republican Party have expressed opposition to. Major affected agencies included the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which saw over 3,000 pages altered or removed, and the Census Bureau, which removed about 3,000 pages of research materials. While some content was later restored, the modifications represented significant changes to federal government data accessibility and sparked legal challenges from healthcare advocacy groups.
Background Agencies of the United States government share open data for many uses. There are many civic technology, research, and business applications which rely on access to government data. Dataset deletion can, at times, be useful for maintenance; though it can equally result from poor archival practices. There is little government regulation on dataset management, so it can be challenging to determine when content deletions occur. Determining the reasons for removals and their significance is also difficult. All administrations make modifications to public websites, but there is little research on how much change is typical. There has been past speculation that previous government changes would result in removed access to data, but those removals did not happen.
In 2009, Data.gov was established to improve public access to high value, machine-readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. In 2019, the OPEN Government Data Act ordered agencies to share data that could be used to evaluate the effectiveness of their programs and to guide policymaking. Various federal agencies release data on their own websites.
In 2019, Trump signed into law the Foundation for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, which established a system for utilizing data to construct evidence-based policy. Trump's second administration showed a dramatic pivot from this law passed during his first administration.
In late January 2025, organizations under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) paused their external communication during a review.
Removed and modified content
On January 29, 2025, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) ordered agencies to comply with President Trump's executive order, "Defending Women," which requires federal agencies to "recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male". The organizations were told to terminate any programs and remove any outward facing media, documents, materials, communications, and statements that promote "gender ideology" by January 31.
Agencies also moved quickly to comply with the executive order "Ending Radical Government DEI Programs" by removing forbidden terms from their websites. Census.gov went offline as it attempted to comply with the executive orders "Reevaluating Foreign Aid" and "Defending Women". The information removals and modifications reflected policy changes championed by the Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign.
Data removal included topics related to DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), long COVID, HIV/AIDS, vaccines, transgender and gender identity-related topics, foreign aid, environmental justice, emergency management, employment, and the January 6 United States Capitol attack. By February 2, 2025, the content removal included more than 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen government websites. According to The New York Times, the removed pages made up approximately 0.1% of all U.S. government web pages.
Some web pages and documents remain accessible, but were stripped of terminology relating to the prohibited topics. Terms have been replaced across many government web pages; "climate change" was often replaced by "climate resilience", "LGBTQ" replaced by "LGB", and "pregnant people" replaced by "pregnant women". According to The Washington Post, the most common change to web pages was removing DEI-related terms. The website modifications also affected older web pages, such as the description of a 2021 conference and a 2022 letter from cabinet secretaries. The Washington Post reported that some pages seemed to be mistakenly modified; the word "diverse" was removed from a page describing the extent of the Department of the Interior's museum collection.
CDC website As of February 2, more than 3,000 pages from the website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been altered or removed. This included thousands of research papers relating to chronic medical conditions, sexually transmitted infections, Alzheimer's disease, drug overdose prevention, adolescent health, and reproductive care.
Vaccine guidelines for pregnant people were also removed from the CDC website, which The New York Times noted may have been due to use of the gender-neutral term "pregnant people." One employee said that since HIV-related webpages commonly referenced gender, they had to "take everything down in order to meet the deadline". Some data was restored later, such as the Atlas Tool for tracking infectious diseases such as HIV and STIs and information on the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System. As of February 6, 2025, the CDC website maintained a notice stating that "CDC's website is being modified to comply with President Trump's Executive Orders".
A January 2026 study found that among CDC datasets that had previously been updated monthly, 46% had unexplained pauses in updates, the majority of which related to data on vaccinations or impacts of common respiratory viruses.
Science and research websites
In January, NASA undertook a comprehensive removal of DEI-related content from its public-facing websites. An internal directive instructed employees to "drop everything" and immediately eliminate references to terms such as "DEIA", "indigenous people", "environmental justice", "underrepresented groups/people", and content specifically targeting women, including content about "women in leadership". This purge resulted in the deletion of various materials, including interviews with Black and female NASA employees, LGBTQ-related content, and two NASA-created comic books about women astronauts.
More than 3,000 pages from the Census Bureau website had been removed as of February 2 2025, primarily articles filed under research and methodology. Pages relating to data stewardship as well as survey and data set documentation were also removed.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had removed more than 100 pages as of February 2, including dozens of regulatory guidelines on topics such as increasing diversity in clinical trials and the potential for addiction and abuse in drug studies.
Close to 50 research papers from the Office of Scientific and Technical Information – part of the Department of Energy – were removed as of February 2. The removed papers covered a range of subjects, such as chemistry, optics, and experimental medicine.
Twenty pages from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) website were removed as of February 2, including a page documenting the organization's zero-tolerance harassment policy. The environmental justice mapping and screening tool EJScreen was removed from the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) on February 5, along several related pages. Public Environmental Data Project (PEDP) published a reconstruction of one of its earlier versions. In March 2025, an unknown executive order signed by President Donald Trump resulted in the NOAA Radar Next Program Overview document being removed from NOAA servers.
The NOAA maintains a list of resources and products it retires. On May 31, the entire climate.gov team was fired, likely shutting down the site. The National Climate Assessment reports, congressionally mandated under the Global Change Research Act of 1990, were taken offline, and the 400 scientists working on the 2027 assessment were fired.
Justice and crime websites The Department of Justice (DOJ) removed over 180 pages as of February 2, including all state-level crime data and seven pages with information on anti-LGBTQ hate crimes. At least 1,000 pages from the Office of Justice Programs, a crime prevention research organization, were removed as of February 2. This included information on teen relationship violence, and a blog post regarding grants directed toward combating hate crimes. The Marshals Service saw two pages removed, relating to correctional facility standards and fitness readiness requirements. The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, which tracked federal police officer misconduct, was removed as of February 20. In March, the DOJ deleted a study showing that undocumented immigrants commit less crime than American citizens.
In September 2025, a study conducted by the National Institute of Justice was deleted which showed that white supremacist and far-right violence were the most common forms of terrorism and domestic violent extremism in the United States. The Not One More Report on missing, murdered, and disappeared Native Americans was removed from the DOJ's website in February 2025; the administration said that the report, mandated by Congress by the Not Invisible Act, was pulled to ensure compliance with one of Trump's recent executive orders.
Healthcare and social services websites Head Start, a U.S. federal aid program for low-income childcare, had over 200 pages removed as of February 2, including advice on establishing familial routines and guidance to help prevent postpartum depression. The removals followed a freeze of federal funds to the program days earlier.
As of February 2, nearly 150 pages had been removed from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website. This included more than 50 press releases about using a helpline following shootings or natural disasters. The Health Resources and Services Administration deleted 18 pages from their website as of February 2, including information on the Mpox vaccine and opioid addiction among women. Three pages from the Department of Veterans Affairs were removed as of February 2, including information on healthcare for minority and LGBTQ veterans, as well as the equity of the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Health Care System. ReproductiveRights.gov, an HHS website providing information on reproductive care, was taken offline. The website was launched by the Biden administration following the overruling of Roe v. Wade.
On February 13, Garey Rice, the principal deputy assistant secretary for operations at HHS, declared that DOGE employees grafted to the agency have "full access to all unclassified agency records and software and IT systems" and are tasked, among other things, with the obligation to "destroy or erase copied HHS data or information when no longer needed for official purposes."