According to a research released by the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), the current Trump administration has made 70% more changes to government environmental webpages in its first 100 days than the previous Trump administration, and those changes are more daring.
Following President Trump’s inauguration in 2017, EDGI was established as a nonprofit network of data-driven scholars. It records how government environmental data is becoming less accessible and useful and keeps it available to the general public.
According to the group, there were 632 significant website modifications during the first 100 days of this year compared to 371 during the first 100 days of the first Trump administration. According to EDGI, a substantial modification is one that modifies a page’s content, focus, or linkages.
Despite having fewer volunteers at the beginning of the second Trump administration and monitoring 4,429 pages this year as opposed to over 25,000 in 2017, the growth was still noticeable. According to EDGI, its network members kept an eye on government websites while compiling the report. The data they kept and the standards they employed to keep an eye on those federal websites were then made publicly accessible.
Gretchen Gehrke, EDGI’s co-founder, adds, “I am surprised by the extent of the removal of information about environmental justice.” “That level of total erasure we didn’t see with any topic under the first-term administration.”
Diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and environmental justice—the belief that all people, regardless of background, have the right to a healthy environment and the ability to participate in environmental decisions—were among the administration’s top priorities, according to the EDGI report. On January 20, Trump signed an executive order abolishing roles, offices, and programs associated with both concerns. After former President Biden made environmental justice a top priority for his administration, that is when it happened.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, agencies are refocusing on their core missions and shifting away from ideological activism,” White House associate press secretary Taylor Rogers told NPR in an email.
The effort to remove websites started the day after Trump took office in January, according to the EDGI investigation. Over the course of the following month, nine comparable screening tools at other agencies were eliminated, including the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool from the Council on Environmental Quality. To ensure that 40% of the benefits of the climate program went to underserved populations, the Biden administration used such methods to identify those communities.
Though less frequently than on environmental justice and DEI websites, the investigation discovered that information about climate change has also been changed or taken down from federal websites. GlobalChange.gov, a federal website dedicated to climate change research, was shut down. However, the EPA’s main climate change website is still up and running, including connections to scientific data and suggestions for what people can do to combat climate change.
Climate.gov, a popular website run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), stopped adding new content this summer after the ten employees who contributed to it were let off. The website, which had around a million users each month, included information on drought conditions, shifting weather patterns, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Gehrke claims that the way an administration runs its webpages is not closely monitored.
“We really need to protect our information better,” they claim. “Websites are the primary means by which the government communicates with the public.” Gehrke further asserts that the public’s ability to engage in a democracy depends on having access to quality information.
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