Public Health Websites Are Going Dark
The health of the body politic—and our bodies—depends on the free flow of information. Here’s how to fight Trump’s censorship
By Jennifer Weiss-Wolf
As per Trump’s “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Government” executive order, last week the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) ordered federal agencies to take down all public information on its websites and social media accounts that “inculcate or promote gender ideology.” When the initial deadline arrived—Friday, January 31, at 5pm ET—multiple web entries and databases, including many dedicated to public health, went dark.
A real-time New York Times analysis identified 8,000 pages removed from government websites, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Census Bureau. Some of the scrubbed pages have popped on- and off-line over and over again, sowing additional confusion.
Of course, the chaos is part of the crisis for democracy. So too is the censorship. And all of it poses an immediate threat to public health and safety. Scientists and physicians rely on real-time data; citizens rely on real-time advice and information. As former CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden emphasized in response, “Suppressing or limiting access to facts weakens our ability to address urgent health challenges—from infectious disease outbreaks to mental health crises. Hiding the facts puts lives at risk.”
Among the deleted resources are CDC guidelines for tracking, preventing and treating HIV; information about sexually transmitted diseases; and essential summaries of contraceptive safety, efficacy, and usage. As of Tuesday, February 4, the agency had posted on every page: “The CDC website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.”
Meanwhile, the site for NIH’s Office for Sexual and Gender Minority Research is gone, and the NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health dropped key pages including a portal about maternal morbidity and mortality. (Given my own work on menopause policy, I quickly checked the midlife women’s health section—which is still standing and 2025 meetings and workshops appear to remain scheduled. I stand by my assertion here at The Contrarian that menopause policy in this era may hold promise yet.)
On Tuesday, February 4, Public Citizen filed a lawsuit on behalf of Doctors for America and the 27,000 physicians and medical students it represents. The suit names OPM as a defendant, along with agencies that removed key pages—the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, and Department of Health and Human Services—and alleges that the “removal of the webpages and datasets … deprives physicians of resources that guide clinical practice, and takes away key resources for communicating and engaging with patients.” It argues that the OPM order is in violation of the 1995 Paperwork Reduction Act, which mandates that federal agencies “ensure the public has timely and equitable access to the agency’s public information,” and “regularly solicit and consider public input on the agency's information dissemination activities.”
At the same time, there is a herculean and whirlwind effort on the part of researchers, journalists, and advocates to preserve and republish missing information. I’ve rounded these resources up to share with Contrarian readers (this list is in progress and will be updated as new resources emerge):
The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is a site every citizen can access; here is a guide for seamless searching; Harvard’s School of Public Health held a “datathon” of its own to archive articles stored there.
Abortion Every Day creator Jessica Valenti created CDCGuidelines.com where she has retrieved CDC documents on reproductive rights issues, sexual health, intimate partner violence, and more.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has stepped up to host PDFs of government-issued OB-GYN-related guidance. ACOG also uploaded to its site the CDC’s recommended immunization schedules for adults, adolescents, and children.
After reproductiverights.gov went dark—the comprehensive site created by the Biden administration in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision in 2022—theSkimm republished all its content at reproductiverightsdotgov.com. They have since launched cdcdotgovcontraception.com to share all of the CDC’s archived information about contraception.
The AIDS Foundation Chicago reports that it has proactively captured HIV information from the CDC website and will republish.
The 19th newsroom preserved key government documents and pages for future access and accountability, including maternal mortality data, research studies on the mental health of girls and LGBTQ youth, statistics about women in the workforce, among others.
The health of the body politic—and the health of our bodies—depends on the free flow of research and information. The public response to the administration’s power grab has been not just heartening, but an important lesson for mobilizing in this next era. As quickly as information is suppressed, all of us can play a part in responding—whether that be suing, searching, or simply sharing.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law.
This is an enormously helpful resource! Thank you!
Thank you for this! I have been a patient advocate since 2009 and I cannot tell you how often I depended on the many facets of HHS and it information resources to provide information to patients. The fact that one person right now is taking away so much health information that is so vital to patient care is just horrible and dangerous.