DON'T BELIEVE YOUR LYING EYE'S
OPM denies federal government website shutdown reports: ‘False rumors’
Alex Gangitano
Fri, January 31, 2025
THE HILL
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said it gave no orders to shut down government websites amid confusion over complying with a new Trump administration policy requiring agencies to scrub any mentions of diversity on their site.
The OPM said it has no intention of taking down all agency websites and called the reports a “false rumor.”
“OPM sent guidance to agencies to remove gender ideology-related content from their websites by 5 pm today as part of the efforts to defend women and uphold the truth of biological sex against the radical claims of gender activists,” an office spokesperson told The Hill.
“This may have been misinterpreted to mean we would shut down government websites who weren’t able to comply but that is not the plan for continuing to implement this important effort,” the continued.
While the website for the census appeared to be down Friday evening, several other major agency sites were still up and running.
President Trump said he didn’t know about the plan when asked about government websites potentially being shut down so they could be scrubbed for information about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
“I don’t know, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me. DEI would have ruined our country,” the president said earlier Friday. “If they want to scrub the website, that’s OK with me.”
CBS News reported Friday that the memo to take steps to scrub agency websites was “misinterpreted.”
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said it gave no orders to shut down government websites amid confusion over complying with a new Trump administration policy requiring agencies to scrub any mentions of diversity on their site.
The OPM said it has no intention of taking down all agency websites and called the reports a “false rumor.”
“OPM sent guidance to agencies to remove gender ideology-related content from their websites by 5 pm today as part of the efforts to defend women and uphold the truth of biological sex against the radical claims of gender activists,” an office spokesperson told The Hill.
“This may have been misinterpreted to mean we would shut down government websites who weren’t able to comply but that is not the plan for continuing to implement this important effort,” the continued.
While the website for the census appeared to be down Friday evening, several other major agency sites were still up and running.
President Trump said he didn’t know about the plan when asked about government websites potentially being shut down so they could be scrubbed for information about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
“I don’t know, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me. DEI would have ruined our country,” the president said earlier Friday. “If they want to scrub the website, that’s OK with me.”
CBS News reported Friday that the memo to take steps to scrub agency websites was “misinterpreted.”
Trump’s demands to drop DEI leads to deletion of unrelated federal pages
Rachel Leingang
Fri, January 31, 2025
THE GUARDIAN
As the Trump administration continues to get rid of diversity programs throughout the government, it is deleting any mention of the words “diversity,” “equity” and “inclusion”.
That meant that in the Internal Revenue Service’s procedural handbook for employees, the terms were wiped out when referring to finances and tax procedures rather than actual DEI programs, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Related: What is DEI and why is Trump opposed to it?
“One section that was still deleted as of Wednesday morning mentioned the potential ‘inequity’ of holding on to a taxpayer’s money and described the potential ‘inclusion’ of a taxpayer identification number on a form,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Webpages that previously included information on the agency’s diversity measures are now gone, showing a “page not found” message.
Donald Trump’s administration officials are deleting these pages and programs across the government after Trump ordered them to end any DEI-related initiatives and cancel contracts that promote these ideas. He encouraged employees to rat out their colleagues who were clandestinely working on diversity issues, setting up a tip line that has been spammed by internet users with jokes and explicit content.
Trump took his anti-DEI stance a step further after a mid-air plane crash this week, suggesting baselessly DEI was to blame.
Related: What we know so far about Trump’s orders on diversity, equity and inclusion
The “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Elon Musk’s extra-governmental agency, has been posting on X about the contracts canceled and programs deleted, claiming to have terminated about $1bn in DEI-related contracts across government agencies.
Still, the Wall Street Journal found, Trump officials are trying to find more people to fire whose work related to DEI, believing there are more than they have initially found because “it seemed that the Trump administration had expected the number to be larger”.
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