Trump's White House blocked government websites aimed at helping Americans vote, fighting human trafficking, easing homelessness, and stopping fraud, federal records show
Records obtained by Insider through the Freedom of Information Act indicate Trump's White House regularly stopped its own agencies from creating new .gov websites.
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Trump's White House blocked government websites aimed at helping Americans vote, fighting human trafficking, easing homelessness, and stopping fraud, federal records show
Dave Levinthal
9 hours ago
President Donald Trump gestures to supporters after speaking during a campaign rally at MotorSports Management Company, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020, in West Salem, Wisconsin. Evan Vucci/AP
- Federal agencies asked the Trump White House to approve dozens of new ".gov" websites.
- But Trump officials rejected many of them, according to records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
- In contrast, the Biden White House has approved almost all such website requests.
Donald Trump's White House blocked dozens of federal agencies from creating new government websites aimed at aiding homeless people, fighting human trafficking, and helping people vote, according to records obtained by Insider through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The requests for new websites came from agencies small and large at a time when Trump had grown openly hostile toward his own administration, often deriding the federal government's executive branch as an out-of-control "deep state" conspiring to undermine him.
The Department of Defense, Department of Labor, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Central Intelligence Agency, and Environmental Protection Agency are among the more than two-dozen agencies that Trump's Office of Management and Budget rebuffed.
Proposed websites that Trump's Office of Management and Budget rejected include HumanTrafficking.gov (Department of State); ReportFraud.gov (Federal Trade Commission); Telehealth.gov (Department of Health and Human Services), FindShelters.gov (Department of Housing and Urban Development), and FiscalData.gov (Department of the Treasury), according to federal records.
Such custom ".gov" website domains enhance government agencies' ability to effectively provide and market services to an American public that's all but universally connected to the internet.
Without them, agencies can still create new sections on their primary websites, but with long and unmemorable subdomain names replete with slashes and hyphens — not exactly prime fodder for a billboard or public service announcement.
The documents obtained by Insider listed no reasons for why the Office of Management and Budget rejected or accepted an agency's ".gov" website domain request.
Neither did the Office of Management and Budget, whose spokesperson, Isabel Aldunate, declined to answer Insider's questions.
Representatives for Trump, who this week officially launched his 2024 presidential campaign, did not reply to several messages.
President Joe Biden attends an event to support legislation that would encourage domestic manufacturing and strengthen supply chains for computer chips in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus, March 9, 2022, in Washington. Patrick Semansky/AP
Major difference between Trump and Biden
The Trump White House's practice of regularly blocking and slow-walking federal agencies' website requests stands in stark contrast to that of President Joe Biden's White House, which has approved almost every request it's received, federal records indicate.Of the 105 ".gov" websites requests Trump's Office of Management and Budget considered between July 2018 and the day Trump left office on January 20, 2021, it accepted 60, denied 44, and left one pending — a 41.9% rejection rate, according to the records obtained by Insider.
Of the 95 ".gov" website requests Biden's Office of Management and Budget considered between January 21, 2021, and September 9, 2022, it accepted 85, denied four, and recorded six requests voluntarily withdrawn — a 4.2% rejection rate.
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Insider asked more than a dozen federal agencies that had their custom .gov website domain requests rejected by the Trump White House to explain what happened.
Some declined to comment, including officials at the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Labor. Others did not respond to inquiries, including the Department of Agriculture and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For those who did comment, they offered limited insight into why they sought new .gov websites or why the Trump White House denied their requests.
Housing and Urban Development, for one, told Insider in a statement that it asked to establish FindShelters.gov in late 2019 "for the creation of a new tool that would provide information about housing, shelter, healthcare and clothing resources in communities across the country."
After two months in limbo, the Trump White House denied the agency's request. It now provides such information on its main agency website, with resources concentrated at a URL of Homelessness Resources.
HUD's understanding of why its request was denied: "There has been a federal-wide ongoing effort to limit and reduce the number of federal public-facing websites. The effort was started to reduce cost and redundancy."
On December 23, 2019, the CIA asked Trump's White House to approve the website domain DataTransport.gov. A week later, the Office of Management and Budget rejected the request.
"The domain was registered to support the IC's data services program," a source familiar with the matter said of the CIA's request, with "IC" standing for "intelligence community." The source offered no additional details.
In March 2019, the generally apolitical Peace Corps asked Trump's Office of Management and Budget to green-light PeaceCorpsCN.gov — a website referencing its operation in China. Office of Management and Budget officials rejected the request on an unspecified date.
"Per compliance with Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 18-01, the domain was requested at the time to enhance email and web security," Peace Corps spokesman Troy Blackwell wrote in an email.
By early 2020, the Peace Corps had begun the process of leaving China — one of Trump's favorite targets and topics. The Peace Corps has not re-upped its PeaceCorpsCN.gov website request since.
"After Peace Corps closed the China post, we no longer needed the domain," Blackwell said.