Trump is outpacing his first term in deleting environmental information

Since the start of the second Trump administration, information on hundreds of government websites focused on environmental regulation has been changed or even removed, according to a new report from the research network and collaborative Environmental Data and Governance Initiative.

The group has been monitoring 4,000 government websites focused on environmental regulation since Trump took office. They’ve catalogued 879 significant changes to content or information access across 639 webpages.

One of the earliest and biggest targets when Trump took office was environmental justice language and information, according to the report. 

“We have seen a complete erasure of evidence of environmental racism,” said Gretchen Gehrke, cofounder of EDGI and the web governance program lead. 

Environmental hazards disproportionately affect marginalized communities, including rural populations, low-wealth communities and those made up of racial and ethnic minorities, as the American Public Health Association details. Environmental justice is meant to ensure fair treatment with respect to environmental laws, policies and regulations. It was a priority for the Biden administration.

By contrast, diversity, equity and inclusion — and environmental justice — were early Trump administration targets for removal. 

“Within days, federal agencies stripped equity-related language from their websites and within one month, all federal agencies had removed their environmental justice websites and webpages,” the report says. “This restriction of language and information facilitates the denial of facts and generation of misinformation, undermining our collective ability to address these issues.”

For example, the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, used to identify disadvantaged communities disproportionately affected by environmental hazards and poverty to help allocate federal funding during the Biden administration, was taken down on inauguration day. Other equity screening tools followed within the month, according to the report. 

“Agencies are refocusing on their core missions and shifting away from ideological activism,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Nextgov/FCW in a statement when asked about the report. “The Trump administration is committed to eliminating bias and producing Gold Standard Science research driven by verifiable data that informs Americans’ decision-making while keeping them safe.”

The government has also made changes to information about climate change, but more variably, according to the report. 

One of the biggest changes there has been the removal of the website that housed congressionally mandated National Climate Assessments. 

Elsewhere, agencies have kept content up, but swapped vague phrases in for more concrete language, such as by replacing the phrase “climate change” itself with “near- and longer-term weather variability.” Other websites remain mostly intact, with alterations made only to remove references to environmental justice.

The group cut off their analysis on July 20. The report itself notes that “it is possible that another significant removal of climate change information is currently unfolding as of the writing of this report.”

Beyond the erasure of information, there’s also the question of what data and information will be produced going forward as the Trump administration has shed thousands of government employees.

The team behind the report has been using software to find changes made to webpages and then manually reviewing flagged alterations to see if they’re significant. They put those that are deemed important — such as when information is altered or information access is changed through means like the removal of links to other pages — into a tracker.

The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative similarly tracked public information during the first Trump administration. The scope and speed of changes to public information have escalated in the second Trump administration, the report says, as the White House pushes deregulation, especially around core environmental laws. 

The initiative is only tracking 20% of the webpages that it did during the first Trump administration, but has seen 70% more changes in Trump’s first 100 days in office.

“This is a threat to democracy,” said Gehrke. “Timely and accurate and broadly accessible information is a pillar of democracy.”

She says that the government needs better information policies to protect information.

“Information suppression is part of a broader political agenda to reshape the structure and function of the federal government,” the report states. “The tactics used facilitate misinformation and constructed ignorance and impede our ability to address real environmental and climate crises.”