Federal agencies scrubbing gender ideology from government websites

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management instructed all department heads to remove external media promoting what the Trump administration describes as gender ideology, according to a leaked memo. Executive management ordered agencies to terminate any programs, contracts, or grants that promote gender ideology. All departments are similarly ordered to end initiatives, offices, and programs promoting gender ideology, and any employees hired for such purposes are to be placed on paid administrative leave, the memo continues.

The new guidance aimed to align departmental programs and resources with President Donald Trump’s executive order recognizing only two sexes. Trump issued several executive orders rolling back gender ideology throughout the government, including orders to shut down federal DEI offices and cut federal support to schools teaching gender and race ideology.

What is gender ideology? President Trump's executive order defines “gender ideology” as a worldview that replaces the concept of biological sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity. Practitioners of gender ideology subscribe to the false claim that males can identify as and become women, and vice versa, according to the order. They also require all institutions of society to publicly accept this false claim as true. The order goes on to characterize gender ideology as the belief that there is a vast spectrum of genders disconnected from an individual's biological sex, and that it's possible for an individual to be born in an incorrectly sexed body.

What kind of external changes have been made? A number of sex and gender-related pages and resources have disappeared from federal agencies. Links to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpages like “Supporting LGBTQ+ Youth” and “April 18 is National Transgender HIV Testing Day” no longer load for the public. Data from the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System showing trending behaviors among high school students also disappeared. Federal web resources about health disparities and safe spaces in schools for LGBT youth are also offline.

Additionally, the CDC’s National Prevention Information Network also removed data on LGBT suicide rates. The empty landing page said the website was undergoing changes to comply with Trump’s executive order. This message also appears above a page that previously targeted “pregnant people.” That URL now redirects users to another page that addresses “pregnant women.”

Dig deeper: Read my report on Trump’s executive order to cut federal funding from organizations that support minors receiving transgender procedures.