In its first six months, the Trump administration has significantly altered the federal environmental information landscape. According to a new report by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI), information about environmental justice and climate change have been particular targets, with swift disappearances across federal websites.
“The pace and severity of this administration’s attacks on environmental information have been far worse than in the first Trump administration,” says lead author Izzy Pacenza. EDGI began monitoring federal environmental websites in the first Trump administration and this time observed 70% more website changes in President Trump’s first 100 days in office. And that was just the start.
Changes to environmental websites under the second Trump administration have also been bolder. Most dramatically, information about environmental racism has been entirely excised from federal websites. On the EPA’s website, for example, all pages about environmental justice are gone. Meanwhile, the reshaping of NOAA’s flagship climate.gov website is currently underway, with the website redirected in June and the entire website staff terminated by July 1.
“Trustworthy information is critical for a functioning democracy,” says lead author Gretchen Gehrke. “These removals reflect a broad deregulatory agenda by this administration to disavow the intersecting issues of environmental justice and climate change.”
Source: Climate of Suppression: Environmental Information Under the Second Trump Administration (EDGI)
More Info About the Report
To record the changes made to public information by the Trump administration, the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) Website Governance team has been monitoring over 4,000 federal environmental webpages and sharing data about changes to content, language, and information access through the Federal Environmental Web Tracker. The scope and speed of website changes during the second Trump administration has far exceeded that of the first. While EDGI is monitoring only 20% of the webpages monitored during the first Trump administration, we observed 70% more website changes in President Trump’s first 100 days in office in 2025 than in 2017.
The nature of these federal website changes are bolder than in the previous Trump administration: Rhetoric has intensified, statutory authorities for information sharing have been challenged, and information about environmental racism has been universally excised from federal websites. Trustworthy public information is foundational for a functioning democracy. The swift removal of public information at odds with the Trump administration’s viewpoints demonstrates the need for more comprehensive and binding policies to protect the integrity of federal information and, ultimately, to protect American democracy.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
In its first six months, the Trump administration has significantly altered the federal environmental information landscape. According to a new report by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI), information about environmental justice and climate change have been particular targets, with swift disappearances across federal websites.
