Trump Targets DEI Pages at the EPA

By EDGI_TeamBlog
Screenshot showing two versions of the "What Kind of People Work at EPA" webpage. Several links to affinity groups have been removed.

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 to share these changes to encourage public engagement with and discussion of their significance, as well as understanding of the ephemeral nature of website information. These website changes are from late January 2025 and feature deletions of EPA pages related to DEI initiatives.

 

What Happened? 

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. These pages, which now return “Page Not Found” errors, include: 

  • EPA’s Office of Inclusive Excellence
  • Equality EPA
  • EPA’s Equity Action Plan
  • African Americans at EPA
  • Asian American and Pacific Islanders at EPA
  • Hispanic at EPA
  • Native Americans at EPA
  • Members of EPA’s LGBTQ Community

In addition to these webpage removals, a link labeled “Diversity and Inclusion” was removed from EPA’s Careers webpage, and the linked page, titled “What Kind of People Work at EPA,” removed links to pages about marginalized groups working at the EPA. While the EPA removed webpages about EPA engaging in DEI efforts, the EPA still has webpages about equity-related work outside of the EPA. See more details below.

 

Why We Think it is Interesting: 

Soon after being sworn in, Donald Trump issued Executive Orders attacking DEI initiatives in the federal government, including “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing” and “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” Following these Executive Orders, the Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to agency leaders requiring them to shutter agency DEI offices, layoff employees working on DEI issues, and to report any ongoing undercover DEI efforts. Trump has used his first hours in office to disparage and dismantle Biden-era efforts to expand equity and environmental justice, bury information, and adopt McCarthy-era tactics with the federal workforce.

Throughout the first Trump administration, EDGI documented widespread information suppression about issues that were at odds with President Trump’s priorities, such as climate change. The swift removal of webpages about diversity, equity, and inclusion—even those that survived his first administration, such as the “Profiles of African Americans at EPA”—suggests that removal of public information will again be a key tactic of the Trump administration.  

 

More Details: 

Pages that have been altered: 

Pages that have been removed: 

Example pages that still have equity-related language on them: