At noon today, Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States. At the same time, the official website of the current president — whitehouse.gov — was turned over to the Trump administration.
Immediately, people noticed that key items — which were already seen as at-risk with the incoming Republican administration — were nowhere to be found on Trump's site. While we should be wary of reading too much into the changes — a website isn't policy, after all — it's instructive to see what's missing. Here are some of the big omissions:
Climate Change
First on the chopping block — references to climate change. Here's what the section looked like under Obama:
That link now redirects to a dead page:
The only passing mention to climate change comes in Trump's new section "An America First Energy Plan," which announces the coming repeal of Obama's Climate Action Plan:
For too long, we’ve been held back by burdensome regulations on our energy industry. President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule. Lifting these restrictions will greatly help American workers, increasing wages by more than $30 billion over the next 7 years.
The Affordable Care Act/Healthcare
The web page for the ACA has been similarly memory-holed. Here's what it used to look like:
This is what you get now:
There does not appear to be a healthcare section on Trump's site (although he has touted a replacement plan that guarantees "insurance for everybody"). Searches for "Affordable Care Act" and "healthcare" return no relevant results.
LGBT Rights
A report (archived here) from the Department of Labor entitled "Advancing LGBT Workplace Rights" promptly disappeared from the Department's site after noon:
It appears other articles tagged as LGBT have also been removed:
Per New York Mag, the LGBT section on WhiteHouse.gov has also been deleted, along with the civil rights section.
We'll update this as more changes come to light. In particular, experts are preparing for scientific data — particular in relation to the climate — to potentially be deleted from the pages of governmental science agencies.
Follow all our inauguration coverage here, and see what the internet is saying about the inauguration here.