A number of U.S. government web pages changed or went dark Friday as agencies scrambled to comply with President Donald Trump's executive orders declaring his administration would recognize only two genders and ordering an end to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
In a letter sent on Wednesday, the Office of Personnel Management directed agency heads to terminate grants and contracts related to “gender ideology,” ask staff to remove pronouns from their government emails, and disband resource groups on the issue, too. The directive, which ordered agencies to institute changes by 5 p.m. on Friday, also asked agencies to remove the term “gender” from government forms and swap it out with “sex.”
Here is a list of changes and missing pages seen so far. A number of pages have popped up since being taken down, some with changes:
1. National Park Service pages for historic sites related to the internment of Japanese Americans, the Tuskegee Airmen and the Stonewall Uprising for gay rights were inaccessible. The Tuskegee site was back online a short time later but the others remained down Friday evening.
2. The State Department removed the X gender marker and replaced “gender” with “sex” on online consular forms. A page with tips for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex travelers was altered. It's now titled “LGBTravelers” instead of “LGBTQIA+ Travelers."
3. The U.S. Census Bureau's homepagewas down. Links to reports and topic pages outlining details about the gender identity, sexual orientation and characteristics of the nation’s population returned errors. A message on Friday afternoon for one topic page titled “Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity” read, “The area of census.gov that you are trying to access is currently unavailable due to maintenance.” Another page titled “Mental Health Struggles Higher Among LGBT Adults Than Non-LGBT Adults in All Age Groups” also was unavailable. Archives of bothpagesshow they were accessible within the past week.
4. Much of the U.S. Census Bureau website, which houses the nation's vast repository of demographic data, returned error messages.
5. A Bureau of Prisons web page originally titled “Inmate Gender” was relabeled “Inmate Sex” on Friday. A breakdown of transgender inmates in federal prisons was no longer included.
6. Much public health information was taken down from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website: contraception guidance; a fact sheet about HIV and transgender people; lessons on building supportive school environments for transgender and nonbinary kids; details about National Transgender HIV Testing Day; a set of government surveys showing transgender students suffering higher rates of depression, drug use, bullying and other problems.
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