Hundreds of US government websites went offline on Monday, with more than 350 sites unavailable, according to an AFP review of federal sites. The outage affected key departments, including Defense, Commerce, Energy, Transportation, Labor, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency and the Supreme Court. This disruption also included the site of USAID, the humanitarian agency being shut down by the Trump administration.
The list of nearly 1,400 federal websites provided by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) showed that many government pages were inaccessible by Monday afternoon (February 3). However, the exact timing of the outages and whether the sites were temporarily offline or deliberately taken down at the administration's request remain unclear.
This incident comes as the Trump administration pushes a controversial agenda to dramatically reduce the size of the US government. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is leading the cost-cutting efforts under the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). On Monday, Musk announced plans to shut down USAID, calling the agency, which operates relief programs in around 120 countries, a "criminal organization."
Employees at USAID were instructed not to report to their offices, as the agency's website also went offline. Meanwhile, multiple US government websites, including those of major public health agencies, have removed references to LGBTQ topics, following a directive from Trump’s administration to end taxpayer-funded programs promoting "gender ideology."
Health experts expressed alarm over the removal of critical information, including HIV and LGBTQ youth data, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website. The CDC's pages related to these issues now display a message saying, "The page you're looking for was not found."
"The removal of HIV- and LGBTQ-related resources from the CDC and other health agencies' websites is deeply concerning," said the Infectious Diseases Society of America, emphasizing the critical need for public access to such information to monitor and respond to public health threats.
Bd-pratidin English/ Jisan
