Trump Administration Orders USDA To Remove All Referencing To Climate Change From Its Websites

On Thursday, President Donald Trump ordered the United States Department of Agriculture to take down all websites that mention climate change. This action is in accordance with the administration’s policy agenda to review federal spending according to the Office of Management and Budget.

In an email sent out on Thursday, USDA Director of Digital Communications Peter Rhee detailed the process, which required staff to “identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change” and “document it in a spreadsheet.”

Pages are separated by the tiers that their climate-related content falls under, “Tier 1” including pages dedicated entirely to climate change and “Tier 2” categorizing those where a significant portion of the content relates to climate change.

Website managers at the Agricultural Research Service received a separate email that emphasized the urgency of the request. Several websites went dark on Friday, including the United States Forest Service website. It has resources such as research and adaptation tools that provide vital vulnerability assessments for wildfires.

The changes reflect Trump’s reshaping of the federal government’s policies on global heating, which was preceded by Trump’s actions to repeal environmental protections put in place by former president Joe Biden and withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement.

Trump has repeatedly made claims denying and downplaying the impacts of climate change. His nominee for USDA Secretary, Brooke Rollins, has been described as a “climate skeptic,” sharing Trump’s denial of the reality of climate change. She advocated for the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and told participants at a right-wing energy conference that “we know the research of CO2 being a pollutant is just not valid.”