Trump Administration’s Data Purge Leads to Federal Website Outages
The Trump administration removed portions of several government websites and health data sets on Friday, alarming healthcare providers and researchers who depend on this data.
Information on HIV was removed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website. Census.gov was also inaccessible late Friday. Earlier, links to U.S. Census data sets returned an error message. Data from the Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System (YRBS), a national survey of American children, was also unavailable.
The White House press office did not respond to requests for comment. President Trump’s first-day executive order to end diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives prompted agencies to review website information, leading to these removals.
Detailed CDC information for doctors treating HIV patients became inaccessible. Links to “HIV Nexus: CDC Resources for Clinicians” and “HIV Data” resulted in page-not-found errors.
State health officials and frontline organizations circulated alerts about these outages on Friday. One email to North Carolina organizations, reviewed by TIME, advised healthcare workers to download crucial data. The email stated the YRBS was removed and its return was uncertain.
—WITH REPORTING BY ANDREW CHOW