BREAKING NEWS: Censorship returns to the CDC. At least 22 webpages are down.
The Trump administration's HHS is back to its old habits of targeting public health resources deemed too woke.
I believe we are breaking some news here. My thanks to Polly Powledge for quickly analyzing the Wayback Machine archive to create the resource found at the bottom of this page. And, as always, my thanks *to you* for reading, sharing, and supporting this work.
Censorship is back at the CDC, Inside Medicine has learned. A new table provided by an active agency employee listed nearly two dozen webpages that are now offline. Many of the 22 removed sites appear to have been taken down recently, having been online as recently as earlier this month, an Inside Medicine analysis revealed. Some of the removed sites may have been removed within the last few days, while others may have been offline for far longer, but flew under the radar. In some cases, agency staffers have been specifically instructed to remove websites, I was told. Others were discovered by employees in the course of their work, such as a seemingly random RSV surveillance page which is now offline.
The complete list (as of September 20, 2025) of censored CDC pages, however, is anything but random.
As you can see, many, if not most, of the removed pages have obvious tie-ins to topics known to be disfavored by the Trump administration, including some on the care of LGBTQ+ people, health equity issues related to a variety of diseases or disabilities, sexually transmitted infections, and related educational resources.
But the list of censored resources also includes a couple of head-scratchers, like two sites with information on parasitic infections (malaria and cystoisosporiasis). Why those? I asked the CDC whistleblower who provided us with the list. She wasn’t exactly sure, but floated an explanation. “LOL, we think it's because the pages mention ‘asexual reproduction’ of parasites.” Another CDC employee had heard the same theory. The theory sounds credible. Indeed, one of the other currently shuttered sites is entitled “Understanding Asexuality.” If this explanation is correct, this would align with previous examples of censorship implemented by the Trump administration earlier this year, including the immediate cancellation of NIH grants that included the text “trans,” even though in some cases the appearance of those five terrifying letters were part of other “non-offensive” scientific words—such as neurotransmitters or transmission—which apparently got caught up in wide-net searches for material to banish.
Overall, this latest action appears to be yet another angle in the administration's ongoing attack not only on our public health infrastructure, but on the mission-critical work carried out by CDC employees themselves. “The agency is so compromised and the scientists are hostage,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis told Inside Medicine when shown the list. Dr. Daskalakis recently resigned as the CDC’s Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. He has spent the last several weeks advocating for beleaguered scientists who remain in the agency, and, more broadly, for a return to rigorous science within HHS.
We’ve been here before.
Back in late January, the Trump Administration implemented an astonishing regime of unprecedented censorship at the CDC, some of which was first broken here in Inside Medicine. At that time, messages appeared on some of the removed websites and pages explicitly stating that the sites had been removed in order to be scrubbed of any terminology that the administration deemed to be offensive—that is, whatever it considered “woke ideology.” Naturally, the censored pages included many essential public resources, from vaccine schedules to health information for treating LGBTQ+ persons. Fortunately, a successful lawsuit filed by Doctors For America directly led to the restoration of those resources, which was welcome proof that our legal system was still functioning and that the administration was continuing to abide by its rulings. Some expected a protracted appeal process, but the Trump administration surprised many (myself included) when it stood down and moved on to other priorities in its attack on our nation’s public health infrastructure. This time, however, no such explanations appear on the shuttered sites. Whether the administration feels like fighting harder this time remains to be seen.
Why has the Trump administration returned to CDC website censorship now? That’s unclear. But this new development coincides with a period in which the administration has shown renewed interested in testing the limits of its censorship powers. However, it’s also important to remember that the successful Doctors For America lawsuit did not rely on First Amendment arguments—indeed, the federal government can determine the speech and messaging of its own agencies. Rather, the Doctors For America win on behalf of public health (and the public) rested on administrative law. The prevailing argument was that since the public relies on these resources, the federal government cannot suddenly remove them without notice or justification. A similar argument may win another round of legal battles, ones we might expect to soon materialize if the websites are not quickly restored.
Links to CDC websites offline as of early September 20, 2025.
Here are the webpages that we found to be offline, as well as some indication of when they were last seen live. This means that those pages were last live no less recently than the given dates, but in some cases may have been removed more recently, but we do not know.
About Shigella Among Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex With Men; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted Sep 1, 2025.
About STIs and Gay Men; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted Sep 5, 2025.
Alzheimer's Communication Guide; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted June 10, 2025.
CDC's CORE Commitment to Health Equity; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted Jan 31, 2025 (URL was not found in multiple snapshot attempts in February, 2025 and June 10, 2024).
Health Equity and Cancer Prevention; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted Sep 1, 2025.
Health Equity and Drug Overdose; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted Sep 1, 2025.
Health Equity for People with Disabilities; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted Aug 27, 2025.
Health Equity in Injury and Violence Prevention; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted Aug 27, 2025.
Laboratory Identification of Parasites of Public Health Concern: Cystoisosporiasis; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted July 7, 2025.
Laboratory Identification of Parasites of Public Health Concern: Malaria; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted Sep 6, 2025.
NPIN: Guidelines for Comprehensive Sex Education 3rd Edition; 403/ACCESS DENIED error code, last snapshotted July 8, 2025.
NPIN: Lesbian/Bisexual Women; This page loads but only the title shows. It has never been snapshotted in the Wayback machine archive.
NPIN: Understanding Asexuality; 403/ACCESS DENIED error code, last snapshotted Nov 23, 2024 (403ed a bunch of times in February, 2025).
NPIN: Understanding Bisexuality; 403/ACCESS DENIED error code, last snapshotted Nov 23, 2024 (403ed a bunch of times in February, 2025).
Prevention Approaches for Viral Hepatitis in Gay and Bisexual Men; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted Aug 30, 2025.
Previous MPOX Risk Assessment July 2024; loads as an archived file.
Risk of Clade 1 Mpox among Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men who Have Sex With Men; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted Jul 20, 2025.
RSV Surveillance; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted Sep 10, 2025.
STI Information for Transgender and Gender Diverse Persons; now redirects to https://www.cdc.gov/sti/?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/std/treatment-guidelines/trans.htm; was snapshotted February, 2025, when it also redirected. Not snapshotted earlier in wayback machine.
Tuberculosis and Asian Persons; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted Aug 28, 2025.
Viral Hepatitis Among Men Who Have Sex with Men; 404ed out / page not found, last snapshotted Aug 28, 2025.
If you have information about any of the unfolding stories we are following, please email me or find me on Signal at InsideMedicine.88.
So a CMS deemed federal healthcare facility is required to meet JC standards for reducing Healthcare disparities for accreditation, but CDC is removing pages on health equity? Um...meanwhile we're all under HHS 🤡
My main nightmare is what ones like Peter Miller, Phillip Markolin, Peter Daszak talk of. A disease spread by bats, other wildlife is enhanced by people living closer to normally where wild animals live (or a wildlife wet market selling them live). The virus starts to spread likely in SE Asia/China (like the Covid viruses) or Africa (like Ebola). The CDC doesn't communicate as much because of cuts & programs eliminated, NIH does little cross research & talking with other countries, research is restricted so if something breaks out they aren't ready, FDA who knows what happens with them in a few yrs since RFK Jr HATES big pharma. Just goes on. I see this latest example of another step of the US being totally unprepared. And this virus will have a higher fatality rate than Covid 19. Even a 30-40% fatality is millions of dead. It's hard for me to see any of this like the deletion of these sub studies at CDC without looking at it all collectively.