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Update. "The mad dash to protect environmental data from Donald Trump"
https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/18/24346025/data-donald-trump-climate-environment-epa
(#paywalled)

"Information about climate change vanished from federal websites under Donald Trump, who has repeatedly called climate change “a hoax.” Now, federal agencies could face deep staff and budget cuts overseen by Trump cronies Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. The proposed cuts not only threaten what kind of data the government shares but also whether it can collect and organize it at all....

One key resource that could languish under the Trump administration is the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool, #EJScreen.…Even if it stays online, the tool is not as useful without constant upkeep....

Much of the environmental data included in EJScreen is collected by the #EPA itself. The EPA isn’t likely to abandon its air quality monitors anytime soon, but #Project2025…proposes eliminating the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights that manages the tool...."

Update. Here's a good use of #GitHub to track textual changes and page takedowns on federal govt web sites since #Trump took office.
https://www.404media.co/github-is-showing-the-trump-administration-scrubbing-government-web-pages-in-real-time/

This project is dedicated to the pages on #DEI. I hope someone launches a similar project on the pages dedicated to science and research.

Update. "For the first time in its more than 60-year history, the #CDC's [#OpenAccess] Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (#MMWR) did not go out as scheduled because of a communications pause at federal health agencies issued by the #Trump administration."
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/generalinfectiousdisease/113905

Update. As recently as January 2, 2025, #NASA had five modules for teaching #OpenScience on its web site. The #Trump administration has taken them down.
https://science.nasa.gov/open-science/tops/os101/

Here they are in the @internetarchive Wayback Machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250102141453/https://science.nasa.gov/open-science/tops/os101/

Update. If you're following this thread, also follow the Silencing Science Tracker from Sabin Center for Climate Change Law (at Columbia Law School) and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund.
https://climate.law.columbia.edu/Silencing-Science-Tracker

Update. "Datasets aggregated on data.gov, the largest repository of U.S. government #OpenData on the internet, are being deleted, according to the website’s own information. Since Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, more than 2,000 datasets have disappeared from the database."
https://www.404media.co/archivists-work-to-identify-and-save-the-thousands-of-datasets-disappearing-from-data-gov/

Update. "#USDA ordered to scrub climate change from websites"
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/31/usda-climate-change-websites-00201826

"Agriculture Department employees have been ordered to delete landing pages discussing climate change across agency websites and document climate change references for further review, according to an internal email obtained by POLITICO...."

Update. I just posted an item outside this thread that belongs in the thread. Sorry. Here it is. The #Trump #CDC is asking staffers to withdraw pending scientific publications that use newly-prohibited terms like #transgender, #immigrant, or #LGBT.
https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/113946091994922725

Update. "Top advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [#CDC] are asking the agency’s acting director to explain the abrupt removal of information and data from CDC websites, and say when it will be restored. In a sharply worded letter sent Saturday, the group asked Acting Director Susan Monarez what the rationale was for removing the data, if the consequences and legal authority of such a decision were considered, what was being done to safeguard the data sets that were removed, and when access to them would return. The letter asks for answers by Feb. 7."
https://archive.is/SWhYj

The CDC advisory board was disbanded by Trump in 2019 and revived by Biden in 2021. The members "expect to be fired" for asking the agency to explain and reverse the takedowns.

Update. "Represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group, Doctors for America filed a #lawsuit today [Feb 4] against the Office of Personnel Management (#OPM), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (#CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (#FDA), and the Department of Health & Human Services (#HHS) for the removal of a broad range of #health-related data and other information used by health professionals and researchers from publicly accessible government websites."
https://www.citizen.org/news/doctors-for-america-sues-over-removal-of-health-information-from-hhs-cdc-fda-websites/

Update, on the #CDC order directing staffers to retract pending journal articles that use now-prohibited terms like #transgender and #immigrant (earlier in this thread) …

Bravo to the #BMJ (@bmj_latest) for calling this order "sinister and ludicrous."
https://www.bmj.com/content/388/bmj.r253

"This is not how it works. Medically relevant terminology and inclusive language follow evidence based reporting standards or are matters of individual journal style and policy. They do not follow political orders. Similarly, co-authors cannot simply scrub themselves from articles. Authorship gives credit and accountability for the work, and an article’s list of authors does not ghost contributors. If authors wish to withdraw submissions under review at a journal, this process is feasible should all of their co-authors agree. However, if somebody who merits inclusion in the authorship group of an article requests to be removed, even with the approval of the co-authors, this is a breach of publication ethics."

Update. Here's an online tool from #BradleyAllf to help you publish research in the #Trump age, especially if you're a US govt scientist. Just paste in your abstract and it will underline the banned words.
https://brad7280.github.io/thoughtcrime-checker/

Update. "Staffers with Elon #Musk’s [#DOGE] entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (#NOAA)…today, inciting concerns of downsizing at the agency."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/04/doge-noaa-headquarters

What's the #Trump or #Trumpist interest here?

1. "#Project2025…called for the agency to be 'broken up and downsized', claiming the agency is 'harmful to US prosperity' for its role in #climate science."

2. Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA official, "noted it had been a longtime goal of corporations that rely on NOAA data to prevent the agency from making the data public, instead of giving it directly to private corporations that create products based on it, such as weather forecasting services."

PS: Rosenberg is right. During the GWBush admin, Senator #RickSantorum (R-PA) repeatedly tried to take down NOAA's open weather data, to benefit AccuWeather, the for-profit weather forecaster in his state. I wrote about it often at the time and may have to dig out and reup those old pieces.

Update. The #BMJ isn't the only journal pushing back against the #CDC directive that staff scientists should retract pending publications that use Trump-banned words. (Earlier in this thread.)

Kudos to the _American Journal of Public Health_ (#AJPH) for pushing back as well.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/114076

From publisher Georges Benjamin: "We at the American Journal of Public Health have no interest in following the president's prohibitions on language. We will publish things under our guidelines, under our ethical principles." Benjamin acknowledged that the journal may now get fewer submissions from government scientists.

AJPH is published by the American Public Health Association (#APHA).

Update. #OMB is telling #DOGE to stop using #Slack. Why? Because Slack messages are subject to #FOI requests.
https://www.404media.co/doge-employees-ordered-to-stop-using-slack-while-agency-transitions-to-a-records-system-not-subject-to-foia/

Update. If you're following this thread, you might also follow Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to #Trump Administration Actions, from #JustSecurity.
https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/

Update. The Dept of Defense (#DOD) just released the implementation plan for its upgraded #OpenAccess policy under the Biden-era #OSTP #NelsonMemo.
https://discover.dtic.mil/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/DoD_PublicAccessPlan_Dec_2024.pdf

This is the first fed agency action of its kind since #Trump took office. Note that, so far, this work has not stopped or changed.

Update. "Intense backlash prompted the reinstatement of some online resources. But guidelines for safe contraception and information on racial inequities in health care remain missing."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/health/trump-gender-ideology-research.html

Update. "White House budget proposal could shatter the National Science Foundation"
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/02/white-house-budget-proposal-could-shatter-the-national-science-foundation/

" 'This kind of cut would kill American science and boost #China and other nations into global science leadership positions,' [said] Neal Lane, who led the #NSF in the 1990s during Bill Clinton's presidency."

PS: I've never liked #nationalist arguments for funding or fostering science. Science is international. But the #Trump admin is putting us in a dilemma. Either we see deep cuts in US science funding. Or we use nationalist arguments to avert those cuts.

There are non-nationalist arguments to fund US science. For example, good science is usually expensive and those who do it well should be funded for the benefit of all. Unfortunately that argument is not likely to work on Trump admin officials. It's not US-specific and applies everywhere, even in China.

Update. The @WashPost does a good job showing the breadth of govt science and info taken down by the #Trump admin.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2025/sample-government-webpages-trump-doesnt-want-you-see/

Update. "Trump officials exerting unprecedented control over CDC scientific journal"
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-officials-influence-cdc-mmwr/

"Trump administration political appointees have taken steps in recent weeks to exert unprecedented influence over the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's flagship medical research publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, multiple federal health officials tell CBS News. The interference included dictating what to cover and withholding studies on the growing bird flu outbreak."

PS: Just curious. How do Trump officials decide that covering bird flu is bad for their agenda?

Over at @deltathink, Dan Pollock and Ann Michael estimate the impact of #Trump executive actions on academic publishing, starting with the #CDC.
https://www.deltathink.com/news-views-special-edition-how-much-of-scholarly-publishing-is-affected-by-us-presidential-executive-orders

"The proportion of CDC-authored papers is tiny [0.1% of global output and 0.6% of US output], and so their suppression is unlikely to lead to a drop in publishing output. However, should the orders spread to other areas of health research, then the effects could be profound – especially for journals and publishers relying heavily on US-authored papers."

Update The #Trump admin has taken down the #OSTP #NelsonMemo.

It was formerly at this URL.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-Access-Memo.pdf

You can still find it in the @internetarchive #WaybackMachine, as recently as Jan 18, 2025.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250118021041/https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-Access-Memo.pdf

We can't tell yet whether it was taken down because Trump officials didn't like the #OpenAccess policies it laid out, didn't like its use of #DEI language — or both.

h/t https://fediscience.org/@jnonfiction@social.coop

Update. I still don't know the full story behind the takedown of the #NelsonMemo. But here's a clue. The Dept of Defense (#DOD) continued rolling its memo-based #OpenAccess policy *after* Trump took office and *after* the memo was taken down.
https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/113964410103345053

That's a sign that agencies have not been told to stop rolling out their memo-based policy upgrades. But of course that may change.

Also note that memo is preserved in the #NationalArchives, for now, not just in the Wayback Machine.
https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-Access-Memo.pdf

(Yes, I'm aware that Trump fired Colleen Shogan, the Biden-era National Archivist.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/us/politics/trump-fires-the-nations-archivist-in-latest-round-of-personnel-purge.html

Update. "In the initial days of the #Trump administration, officials scoured federal websites for any mention of what they deemed #DEI keywords — terms as generic as “diverse” and “historically” and even “women.” They soon identified reams of some of the country’s most valuable public health data containing some of the targeted words, including language about LGBTQ+ people, and quickly took down much of it — from surveys on obesity and suicide rates to real-time reports on immediate infectious disease threats like bird flu."
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/399319/trump-cdc-health-data-removed-obesity-suicide

Update. "The White House has designated Mr. #Musk’s office, United States #DOGE Service, as an entity insulated from public records requests."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/politics/trump-musk-doge-foia-public-records.html

In Nov 2024 before Musk joined the #Trump government, he wrote on X / Twitter: "There should be no need for FOIA requests. All government data should be default public for maximum transparency."
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1853079605596340235

Update. "Court Orders #CDC, #FDA to Restore Scrubbed Webpages, Data"
https://www.medpagetoday.com/washington-watch/washington-watch/114177

"A federal judge on Tuesday ordered government agencies to restore public access to health-related webpages and datasets that they removed to comply with an executive order by President #Trump…The scrubbed material includes reports on HIV prevention, a CDC webpage for providing clinicians with guidance on reproductive healthcare, and an FDA study on 'sex differences in the clinical evaluation of medical products.'"

Update. From @hildabast: "What if We Can’t Rely on PubMed?"
https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2025/02/14/what-if-we-cant-rely-on-pubmed/

"#PubMed is incredibly reliable…That said, between the risks of an exodus of key personnel, understaffing, or goodness-knows-what vandalism when a goon squad arrives at NIH, it’s not paranoid any more to think ahead to the once-unthinkable. What would PubMed enshittification look like? Could PubMed go down more often, and for longer? Might services no longer be free? How else could the #quality and #reliability of its services be degraded?"

Update. From #HaroldVarmus, "I Used to Run the #NIH. Here’s What Worries Me."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/opinion/trump-public-health-funding-nih.html

"I’ve spent over five decades as a scientist in academia and the federal government, including as director of the NIH. Never before have I seen my profession so politicized as it is now under the #Trump administration…For baffling reasons, the executive branch is now waging war on America’s scientific enterprise. This assault includes nominating leaders hostile to science and unqualified for their roles; issuing a barrage of executive orders that disrupt research by restricting meetings, publications, travel and grant making; censoring ideas and even certain words from scientific discourse; and trying to withhold billions of dollars from universities and other research institutions that help pay the costs of research."

PS: In addition to being a former NIH director, Varmus is a Nobel laureate (1989 Medicine) and co-founder of @PLOS.

Update. "The Trump Administration Is Targeting Science. The Scientific Integrity Act Could Help Protect It."
https://blog.ucsusa.org/kellickson/the-trump-administration-is-targeting-science-the-scientific-integrity-act-could-help-protect-it/

"The Scientific Integrity Act (#SI Act) is a bipartisan bill re-introduced on February 6th in the US House of Representatives… [It] would include language prohibiting scientific or research misconduct; preventing intimidation or attempted coercion to alter or censor scientific or technical findings; and allowing public dissemination of scientific and technical findings…It would ensure that scientific conclusions are not made based on political considerations but based on the best available science."