- Researchers are working to find and archive government data that’s been removed from the web following Trump’s executive order restricting “gender ideology.” Some of the data was tied to the CDC and U.S. Census Bureau.
- The CDC reportedly received a list of terms that must be removed from existing or upcoming CDC work, including “gender,” “LGBT,” “pregnant person” or “pregnant people,” and “nonbinary.”
- The list of unacceptable terms comes as Trump signed an executive order banning government employees or taxpayer dollars from being used to censor or limit the free speech of American citizens.
As agencies work to comply with President Donald Trump’s order restricting “gender ideology” from public federal documents, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has pulled down a lot of its publicly available data. One researcher told the Associated Press it was a “mad scramble” to find and archive government data sets from agencies, including the CDC and the U.S. Census Bureau.
Web pages for data, including the CDC’s tracking of HIV rates and other sexually transmitted diseases, came down last week, as did 35 years of data from its health survey of high-school-aged children. That data showed trends in nutrition, drug and tobacco use, sexual behavior and physical activity levels.
Some sets, including the youth data, have since been restored, albeit without details regarding gender. Many web pages note that the agencies are working to comply with Trump’s order.
However, the data in question has already been funded and created.
Both the Washington Post and the Inside Medicine Substack newsletter by Harvard Medical School instructor Dr. Jeremy Faust have reported that CDC officials received a list of terms that must be removed from their existing or upcoming work. Those terms include “gender,” “LGBT,” “pregnant person” or “pregnant people” and “nonbinary.”
It comes as the White House is reviewing policies around speech and censorship. President Trump signed an executive order banning government employees or taxpayer dollars from being used to censor or limit the free speech of American citizens.
Agencies say the removal is temporary. However, it’s unclear whether the changes the CDC is making to comply with the gender-related order could violate the anti-censorship order.
Many old documents are available through the nonprofit Internet Archive. Users can access them by copying a website’s dead link or the link to any altered data and pasting it into the search box at web.archive.org to see an earlier version.