(Screenshot via Data.CDC.gov)
Federal health agencies rushed to remove research and articles using inclusive language in the wake of an executive order on Jan. 20 from President Donald Trump to shut down all federal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.
Trump’s executive order “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing” instructs federal programs to roll back DEI efforts and inclusive language. According to the Associated Press, federal health agencies have rushed to remove research and articles making any mention of gender ideology and more.
Additionally, health agencies have had to identify publications that have already been removed by the Trump administration or other federal agencies without their knowledge. The AP stated that removal of such materials began at the end of January.
The information removed from sites such as the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention includes research mentioning gender ideology in any form. “Social science researchers and other federal data users … described feeling like a five-alarm fire was triggered when they discovered… that vital federal datasets were inaccessible,” the outlet reported.
The New York Times also found that “veteran’s hospitals and local and state health departments” were affected by the order. They noted keywords and terms like “transgender,” “immigrant,” “LGBT” and “pregnant people”were removed from sites.
The order to delete any mention of gender in federal research has caused decades-old databases to be removed. The Times noted that webpages providing information on “ending gender-based violence and supporting L.G.B.T.Q. youths, and another about racism in health,” have also vanished.
Additionally, “some VA Hospitals were told that L.G.B.T.Q. flags and other displays were no longer acceptable” and “bathrooms at health agencies were to be set aside for use by a single “biological sex.”
Amy O’Hara, a Georgetown University researcher and president of the Association of Public Data Users, expressed fears to the AP that inclusive language may only be first in line. She shared that “other politically charged topics — such as climate change or vaccines — might be removed or altered” in the future.
Not only were datasets and summaries targeted for removal, “but so too were codebooks that explain different variables,” and published research referencing those codebooks.
Researchers and officials are still rushing to identify what was lost or altered. The AP noted that data.cdc.gov was down temporarily and now features a yellow ribbon advising the “website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.”
Other statistical agencies and organizations acted rapidly to download federal datasets and upload them onto their own databases in an attempt to preserve the information. Several executives within the data science field have “called the takedowns ‘unacceptable’ and called on Congress and the Trump administration to restore the datasets.”
The Times also reported that following the initial purge, some pages had reappeared partly in response to “intense media coverage, backlash from the scientific community and concern for the public’s health.”
