After assuming office, Donald Trump issued an executive order that restricted government agencies from acknowledging LGBTQ+ individuals, limiting recognition to solely males and females. Consequently, numerous government entities such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health’s Office for Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office had to remove LGBTQ+ related data from their websites, impacting crucial statistical research on infectious diseases and public health, particularly concerning adolescents. Trump’s directive sparked debates, but the elimination of statistical data is detrimental to ongoing research efforts in these areas. The extensive and referenced CDC data, crucial for numerous studies, has been abruptly removed from their website.
Fortunately, some individuals had previously archived CDC website data prior to Trump’s directive, preserving approximately 7,200 web pages accessible through the Internet Archive. Among them, Charles Gaba, a health data enthusiast, expressed his concerns dating back to Trump’s election victory, recognizing the urgency of saving vital data before Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, to prevent significant losses in the initial weeks of his administration. Gaba’s proactive approach involved archiving all Internet Archive links to facilitate easy access to missing CDC web pages. Although archived data may be incomplete, it serves as a partial point of reference.
The future of these archived data remains uncertain, whether they will resurface online or require new data preservation methods. Nonetheless, this event could catalyze non-governmental initiatives for web data backup to prevent valuable information losses in the future.
TLDR: Trump’s executive order restricted government agencies from acknowledging LGBTQ+ individuals, resulting in critical statistical data removal impacting public health research. Individuals like Charles Gaba preemptively archived CDC website data, serving as a partial resource amidst uncertainty over data restoration and future data preservation initiatives.
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