Trump administration erases mention of climate change and LGBT+ health data from key government websites
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Just under two weeks into the Trump administration, government agencies are making major edits to the content shared on their website to fit with the president’s policies.
Several pages were taken down from the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention related to health disparities among LGBT+ youth.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which manages the U.S. Forest Service, has removed pages related to climate change.
“You are not authorized to access this page,” the USDA website reads.
“The page you’re looking for was not found,” the CDC says.
Notably, information about climate change and its impact on agriculture still remains on the Environmental Protection Agency website.
Using the WayBackMachine, the Department of Agriculture pages feature climate change science and effects, adaptation, information about the USDA’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Assessment Program. The site also offered a link to the Fifth National Climate Assessment, the U.S. Government’s preeminent report on climate change impacts, risks, and responses.
The now-missing CDC pages discuss how LGBT+ youth are “at risk for negative health outcomes” and how to support them.
“Many LGBTQ+ youth thrive during adolescence. But stigma, discrimination, and other factors put them at increased risk for negative health and life outcomes,” the CDC resource used to say. “Stigma comes in many forms, such as discrimination, harassment, family disapproval, social rejection, and violence. This puts LGBTQ+ youth at increased risk for certain negative health outcomes.”
“Everyone I know in public health and science … is freaking out right now,” Ariel Beccia, a researcher and instructor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health focused on eating disorders in LGBT+ populations, told STAT News.
The moves come amid a bid to oust all transgender troops from the military as well as a push away from clean energy initiatives to follow Trump’s “drill, baby, drill,” campaign pitch.
Trump has said climate change is a “scam” and a “hoax,” and moved to withdraw the nation from the international Paris climate agreement. The pact aims to reduce warming from climate change, and prevent expected consequences like worsening drought and more powerful storms. Brooke Rollins, his pick for USDA secretary, has denied that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.
A Friday report from Politico, citing an internal email, said that employees at the USDA had been ordered to delete landing pages discussing climate change across agency websites. They were instructed that all climate change-related information should be identified and documented “in a spreadsheet” for review. ABC News also said it had obtained the spreadsheet.
Neither the CDC nor the USDA immediately replied to The Independent’s requests for comment on the matter.
