The Office of Personnel Management, the chief human resources agency and personnel policy manager for the federal government, said Friday that it gave no orders to shut down government websites.
Some government webpages briefly went dark Friday, according to multiple media reports. Pages for the Federal Aviation Administration, the Census Bureau and the Department of Justice were among those that went blank. Those three later came back online.
The OPM said there was confusion over a new Trump administration policy requiring agencies to scrub any mentions of gender ideology on their websites by 5 p.m. ET on Friday.
The OPM said it has no intention of taking down all agency websites and called the reports a “false rumor,” The Hill reported Friday.
Jennifer Jacobs, a senior White House reporter at CBS News, posted Friday on X that OPM Communications Director McLaurine Pinover told her guidance was sent to agencies to remove gender ideology-related content from their websites by 5 p.m., but the Trump administration doesn't plan to shut down websites that don't comply.
OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell on Wednesday issued a memo that asked government agencies to “take prompt actions to end all agency programs that use taxpayer money to promote or reflect gender ideology as defined” in Trump’s executive order, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” Trump signed the order on Jan. 20, his first day in office.
Included in the memo was a directive to “take down all outward facing media [websites, social media accounts, etc.] that inculcate or promote gender ideology.”