United States | News & Politics

Essential research on HIV, tobacco use and contraceptive use was removed from the CDC website in January. Information on safety while traveling and international adoption vanished off the State Department’s site. A page on LGBTQI+ inclusion disappeared from the Justice Department. Even an educational page on workplace discrimination was missing from the Labor Department’s site.

All of this information and research was hastily altered or scrubbed entirely from the internet in response to one of President Trump’s many executive orders, issued moments after he took office, declaring there to be only two sexes, male and female, as assigned at birth, and ordering an end to “gender ideology.” Another executive order targeted Diversity, Equity, Inclusion efforts. In response, federally funded agencies rushed to comply.

Previously, these pages had all made references to the LGBTQI+ — lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex — population. After the executive order, however, that vanished; the State Department limited its advice for queer travelers in homophobic countries solely to “LGB” travelers. Other pages, particularly those related to queer working groups formed as part of DEI efforts and scientific research on transgender populations, disappeared entirely.