In the first 100 days of Trump’s second term in office, a barrage of removals disappeared environmental data and information across agency websites. In this blog, we reflect on the suppression of environmental information in the second Trump administration, beginning with a look back at Trump’s first 100 days in 2017 to see how the … Read more
Highlights from the Change Log:NOAA Upholds Its Authority to Provide Public Information Welcome! This post is part of the EDGI Website Monitoring Team’s “Highlights from the Change Log” blog series. The purpose of this series is to highlight interesting changes we have observed in the language used on, or access to, federal websites. We want … Read more
Highlights from the Change Log: NOAA removes the 2024 Climate Literacy Guide from its website Welcome! This post is part of the EDGI Website Monitoring Team’s “Highlights from the Change Log” blog series. The purpose of this series is to highlight interesting changes we have observed in the language used on, or access to, federal … Read more
In response to the Trump administration’s rapid dismantling of federal websites, the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) has relaunched its Federal Environmental Web Tracker.
Information on the internet might seem like it’s there forever, but it’s only as permanent as people choose to make it. That’s apparent as the second Trump administration “floods the zone” with efforts to dismantle science agencies and the data and websites they use to communicate with the public. The targets range from public health and demographics to climate science.
On February 5th, EPA removed several web pages about the environmental justice mapping and screening tool, EJScreen, as well as the tool itself. These pages, which now cannot be accessed or simply say, “Sorry, but this web page does not exist,” include:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has renamed its “Climate Resilience” website to “Future Conditions,” and has removed much of the climate-specific language from the site’s landing page. For example, FEMA replaced the introductory sentence from “Climate change is the defining crisis of our time” to “Disaster incidents are rising due to increased human vulnerability, exposure and a changing climate.”
Less than three days after CEJST was taken offline, EDGI and fellow members of Public Environmental Data Partners (PEDP) stood up an unofficial but functional copy, restoring public access.
In the first couple of days of the second Trump administration, the EPA removed several web pages related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts at the EPA.
Governments worldwide collect and distribute data relevant to environmental challenges. For instance, the United States (US) federal government collects satellite imagery, climatological and weather records, and measurements of ambient chemical concentrations. Researchers routinely draw on these data to develop predictive models of conditions and potential interventions, while other groups leverage these data to advocate around specific issues that matter to them, like climate change.