Several federal government websites went dark while others were edited to remove mentions of gender on Friday evening as agencies scrambled to meet a deadline to scrub their websites, emails and contracts of “gender ideology”.
The office of personnel management also directed agencies to disband employee resource groups, terminate grants and contracts related to the issue and replace the term “gender” with “sex” on government forms.
By Friday evening, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Census Bureau websites went dark. Navigating to the websites turned up blank pages that said: “The page you’re looking for was not found.” Other agencies took down or altered specific websites. The Bureau of Prisons renamed a website titled “inmate gender” to “inmate sex” and no longer included a list of trans inmates.
The FAA website remained blank on Friday at 9pm ET, though the Census website had reappeared.
US state department employees were directed to scrub gender pronouns from their email signatures by Friday evening, according to an internal email obtained by the Guardian, joining the list of other agencies reportedly sent a similar memo.
The directive came from former ambassador Tibor P Nagy, now the acting under-secretary for management, writing to staff that the department was also launching a comprehensive review to eliminate what he called “gender ideology” from government communications and programs.
“The Department of State is reviewing all agency programs, contracts and grants that promote or incubate gender ideology,” Nagy wrote in the email. “All employees are required to remove any gender identifying pronouns from email signature blocks by 5pm today.”
There are an estimated 77,840 staffers at the state department, but there is no way of knowing how many use a gender identifier on their email signature.
ABC News first reported on Friday that similar orders had been issued at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy, citing internal memos referencing two executive orders signed by Donald Trump on his first day back in office.
In the hours after the order, the CDC took down websites that contained critical health information including a fact sheet about HIV and trans people; lessons on how to create a supportive environment in schools for trans and non-binary students; and information about National Transgender HIV Testing Day as well as contraception.
The transportation department’s directive came as staff were managing the aftermath of Wednesday night’s plane crash near Ronald Reagan National airport. Energy department officials explicitly tied their order to Trump’s executive order demanding the removal of DEI “language in Federal discourse, communications and publications”, according to ABC News.
Nagy’s memo went beyond email signatures, directing state department bureaus to review and revise trainings, forms and plans. The department would also remove what he termed “outward facing media” related to gender issues.
It comes just a week after Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, instructed in an internal cable obtained by the Guardian that applications requesting the use of the gender identity marker “X” for passports and official documents to be halted immediately – also citing the same executive order as Nagy.
