"Depriving the Public's Right to Know
and Undermining Democracy"
On April 30 (local time), Nikkei reported that since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, a large number of U.S. government agency web pages have disappeared. It has been revealed that over 1,000 web pages from about 90 government agencies, including content on the climate crisis and the U.S. Capitol riot, are no longer accessible.
Nikkei stated this after reviewing data from the "End of Term Web Archive (EOT)," a project that preserves government agency website URLs during each U.S. administration transition.
The EOT secured approximately 10,000 URLs of government agency web pages before and after the launch of the second Trump administration. When the web pages were checked at the end of March, more than 1,000 of these pages had been deleted. Nikkei commented, "The subject of this investigation is only a portion of government agency homepages and represents just the tip of the iceberg."
The deleted pages included content on climate crisis measures, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies, and the events of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. In addition, the homepage of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which was closed by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), also disappeared.
For example, the Department of Defense deleted images related to Hispanic and Native American communities from the Air Force homepage. Regarding this, David Super, a professor at Georgetown University, pointed out that deleting content based on race could violate civil rights laws.
Immediately after his inauguration on January 20, President Trump issued pardons to more than 1,500 people indicted for the January 6 Capitol riot. A week later, the Department of Justice web page listing the names of the defendants and other details had disappeared.
Gender issues were also targeted. Pages related to sexual minorities were newly created after President Trump's inauguration, but by the end of March, these pages themselves were no longer accessible. President Trump had signed an executive order immediately after taking office recognizing only two genders, male and female.
The scale of these web page deletions is unprecedented. During the same period at the start of the previous Joe Biden administration in 2021, only 120 out of 3,900 web pages were deleted. Under the Trump administration, the deletion rate was about three times higher than under the Biden administration, and the number of deletions was eight times greater.
James Jacobs, who operates the EOT, pointed out, "There is no precedent for an administration intentionally deleting public information on this scale."
Nikkei noted that deleting public information deprives citizens of their right to know and undermines the foundation of democracy.
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