Market2025 United States government online resource removals
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2025 United States government online resource removals

The 2025 United States government online resource removals are a series of web page and dataset deletions and modifications across multiple United States federal agencies beginning in January 2025. Following executive orders from President Donald Trump's administration, government organizations removed or modified over 8,000 web pages and approximately 3,000 datasets. The changes primarily affected content related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, gender identity, public health research, environmental policy, and various social programs, and other topics Trump and the Republican Party has expressed opposition to. Major affected agencies included the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which saw over 3,000 pages altered or removed, and the Census Bureau, which removed about 3,000 pages of research materials. While some content was later restored, the modifications represented significant changes to federal government data accessibility and sparked legal challenges from healthcare advocacy groups.

Background
Agencies of the United States government share open data for many uses. There are many civic technology, research, and business applications which rely on access to government data. Dataset deletion can be useful maintenance or the result of poor archiving practice. In 2009, Data.gov was established to improve public access to high value, machine-readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. In 2019, the OPEN Government Data Act ordered agencies to share data that could be used to evaluate the effectiveness of their programs and to guide policymaking. Various federal agencies release data on their own websites. In 2019, Trump signed into law the Foundation for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act, which established a system for utilizing data to construct evidence-based policy. Trump's second administration showed a dramatic pivot from this law passed during his first administration. ==Removed and modified content==
Removed and modified content
On January 29, 2025, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) ordered agencies to comply with President Trump's executive order, "Defending Women," which requires federal agencies to "recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male". Agencies also moved quickly to comply with the executive order "Ending Radical Government DEI Programs" by removing forbidden terms from their websites. Census.gov went offline as it attempted to comply with the executive orders "Reevaluating Foreign Aid" and "Defending Women". Data removal included topics related to DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), long COVID, HIV/AIDS, vaccines, transgender and gender identity-related topics, environmental justice, emergency management, Terms have been replaced across many government web pages; "climate change" was often replaced by "climate resilience", "LGBTQ" replaced by "LGB", and "pregnant people" replaced by "pregnant women". This purge resulted in the deletion of various materials, including interviews with Black and female NASA employees, LGBTQ-related content, and two NASA-created comic books about women astronauts. More than 3,000 pages from the Census Bureau website were removed as of February 2, primarily including articles filed under research and methodology. Public Environmental Data Project (PEDP) published a reconstruction of one of its earlier versions. In March 2025, an unknown executive order signed by President Donald Trump resulted in the NOAA Radar Next Program Overview document being removed from NOAA servers. The NOAA maintains a list of resources and products it retires. On May 31, the entire climate.gov team was fired, likely shutting down the site. The National Climate Assessment reports, congressionally mandated under the Global Change Research Act of 1990, were taken offline, and the 400 scientists working on the 2027 assessment were fired. Justice and crime websites At least 1,000 pages from the Office of Justice Programs, a crime prevention research organization, were removed as of February 2. This included information on violence in teenage dating, and a blog post regarding grants that went toward combating hate crimes. In March, the Department of Justice deleted the page about a study showing that undocumented immigrants commit less crime than citizens. In September 2025, a study conducted by the National Institute of Justice showing that white supremacist and far-right violence were the most common forms of terrorism and domestic violent extremism in the United States was deleted. The Not One More Report, on missing and murdered Native Americans, disappeared from the Department of Justice's website in February 2025; the administration said that the report, mandated by Congress by the Not Invisible Act, was removed to ensure compliance with one of Trump's executive orders. Healthcare and social services websites Head Start, a U.S. federal aid program for low-income childcare, had over 200 pages removed as of February 2, including advice on establishing familial routines and guidance to help prevent postpartum depression. As of February 2, nearly 150 pages had been removed from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website. This included more than 50 press releases about using a helpline following shootings or natural disasters. The website was launched by the Biden administration following the overruling of Roe v. Wade. As of April 4, 2025, over 20 National Institutes of Health (NIH) data repositories displayed headers stating "This repository is under review for potential modification in compliance with Administration directives." These repositories contain petabytes of data that are used for public health research in diverse areas, including cancer, brain imaging, sleep studies, Alzheimer's, aging, COVID-19, and HIV. Many of the datasets cannot be archived by outside researchers because they are regulated by Data Use Agreements that must be consistent with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). In April 2025, the Trump administration removed the online hub for federal COVID-19 resources, including COVID.gov and COVIDtests.gov, replacing it with a landing page promoting the COVID-19 lab leak theory. Other websites The Internal Revenue Service removed more than 25 pages as of February 2, including a form that private schools are required to submit annually to certify that they had not engaged in racial discrimination. As of February 2, there were 18 pages removed from the United States Patent and Trademark Office website, including information about veteran inventors and entrepreneurs, and a high school program teaching about intellectual property. As of February 3, four pages from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have been deleted, including an overview of the commission's equal employment opportunity and diversity initiatives. The Association of Academies of the Spanish Language issued a joint statement criticizing the removal, noting the importance of Spanish as the second most spoken language in the United States, especially in Puerto Rico. Signatories included the North American and Puerto Rican Academies of the Spanish Language. International travel advisories on the Department of State website replaced their language on "LGBTQ+ Travelers" with language around "LGB Travelers" and removed reference to safety and other issues faced by transgender Americans in other countries. Thousand of images were reported flagged for removal by the Defense Department. Arlington National Cemetery removed dozens of pages from its website. Some identified gravesites of notable Black, Hispanic and female service members, and others included educational material. On March 18, more than 300 posts were removed from the FTC business guidance blogs, including those reporting on lawsuits by Lina Khan against the tech giants. On April 6, 2025, The Washington Post reported that the National Park Service had revised a web page about the Underground Railroad to remove a quote and image of Harriet Tubman, and to remove the word "slavery" from the opening paragraph. Following an outcry after widespread reporting of the revisions, the changes were reverted the following day. A spokesperson for the National Park Service stated that "Changes to the Underground Railroad page on the National Park Service's website were made without approval from NPS leadership nor Department leadership". In August 2025, the government website for the Constitution of the United States was modified, removing large parts of Section 8 and entirely deleting Sections 9 and 10 from Article 1 of the document. On August 6, the Library of Congress said the deletion of text was "due to a coding error", and was working to correct the issue. As of November 2025, the USDA has deleted its contingency plan to fund SNAP. Datasets In January 2025, the government removed about 3,000 datasets from various platforms. == Legal responses ==
Legal responses
Doctors for America sued the U.S. government to restore health information, arguing "The removal of this information deprives researchers of access to information that is necessary for treating patients ... and for developing practices and policies that protect the health of vulnerable populations and the country as a whole." American Federation of Teachers and Minority Veterans of America and Public Citizen Litigation Group also filed lawsuits. ==Reactions==
Reactions
Representatives from the Population Association of America, the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics, and the (APDU) expressed disapproval of the data deletion. President of the APDU, Amy O'Hara, described a "mad scramble" as researchers searched for copies of the deleted data. The stock market, bond market, and Federal Reserve all continuously make decisions based on labor data. Internet Archive is also a contributor to the consortium effort of developing the End of Term Web Archive, which attempts to copy every government publication at the end of every presidential term. Organizations like IPUMS, which provides data curation, integration, harmonization, is serving as an important source for previously deleted data. The Harvard Law School Library hosts the Data.gov Archive. The Chan School mirrored public health records. The law library's Innovation Lab said that it had managed to preserve 311,000 datasets copied between 2024 and 2025. George Benjamin, head of the American Public Health Association, said that the removals could make it more difficult to track infectious diseases such as HIV and Mpox. Similarly, the Preservation of Electronic Government Information (PEGI) group has voiced similar urgency to collect and save data before they are removed from official government sites. Grassroot, collective efforts like the Data Rescue Project has launched efforts to coordinate these various data saving endeavors. ==References==
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