Large parts of the CDC’s website and several important databases were taken down on Friday and Saturday to comply with Trump’s executive orders banning DEI content. Saturday, a message at the top of the CDC’s home page said the website “is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.”

CDC websites and databases taken offline include the CDC Atlas, the CDC Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, a CDC website about HIV treatment, and the CDC Social Vulnerability Index. Some of these removals were earlier reported by NBC News. Some of the pages were replaced with messages that read “Page Not Found or Temporarily Unavailable” or “The page you're looking for was not found.” There was widespread uncertainty throughout Friday as to whether a broader takedown across the government would happen.

“Our team’s government affairs firm is advising that as of 5pm today, all U.S. government agency websites will be taken down,” an internal email obtained by 404 Media earlier Friday read. “According to reports, agencies are unable to comply fast enough with President Trump’s EO ordering all government entities to remove all DEI references from their websites, so these websites will be taken offline. There is no word on when they will be made available again.”

At 5pm Friday, however, no widespread, cross-government takedowns happened. Throughout the day Friday and Saturday, however CDC pages continued to disappear. Saturday, a message at the top of the CDC’s website said “CDC’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.”

404 Media has reported on U.S. government pages about gender identity were taken down; that GitHub commits showed the Trump administration scrubbing government web pages in real time; and how archivists are working to save thousands of datasets disappearing from Data.gov.

Some federal contractors and federal employees spent much of Friday afternoon panicking about the deletions, and there was uncertainty about what would be taken offline and how widespread the takedowns would be. A CDC employee that 404 Media granted anonymity to speak about sensitive issues said that they were told by the Office of the Chief Information Security Officer of the Department of Health and Human Services that all employees were told they had to delete their preferred pronouns from their email signatures by 5 PM Friday.

Agencies were also ordered to “review all agency programs, contracts, and grants, and terminate any that promote or inculcate gender ideology” and to “take down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that inculcate or promote gender ideology,” with a deadline of 5 PM Eastern Friday. Agencies were forced to “send an email to all agency employees announcing that the agency will be complying with Defending Women and this guidance.” Agencies have been ordered to create a report within the next week that includes “a complete list of actions taken in response to this guidance.” The specific executive order is Trump’s “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government (Defending Women).”

A similar message was posted to Reddit earlier on Friday. “We are being told that the CDC website is scheduled to go down by EOD today. Please share this with your partners and encourage them, as well as you should plan to download any significant information,” it reads.

There have been several efforts to archive data that already existed across the federal government, including the End of Term Archive, a volunteer effort that saved hundreds of terabytes of data before Trump was inaugurated.

Nomad co-founder and CEO Noah Dentzel joins us to discuss the company’s early beginnings, the product development process, success, and learning experiences.

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The National Transportation Safety Board will only update the press about the plane crashes in Washington, DC and Philadelphia on X — not over email, as reported earlier by The Desk. The agency announced on Saturday that it will use its @NTSB_Newsroom account to share ”news conferences or other investigative information.“

The NTSB later said, “Reporters should email [email protected] for all other inquiries,” claiming that it was meant to “better manage the volume of” emails about the two incidents n. “The NTSB media relations team has always used Twitter/X to inform the media and public on the time and location of media briefings. We cannot respond to every email asking for the details of media briefings,” the NTSB said, without explaining the process behind the decision or why an agency would rely solely on one privately owned social media platform.

At the same time, the US Department of Defense is also removing major outlets, like NBC News, The New York Times, NPR, and Politico, from their dedicated workstations in the Pentagon, according to a report from NBC. Instead, the DoD will impose an “annual media rotation program” that will replace the outlets with conservative-leaning ones, like One America News Network, the New York Post, and Breitbart. It also includes HuffPost even though it doesn’t have a Pentagon correspondent, NBC notes.

The Trump administration is targeting media networks in other ways, too, as the Federal Communications Commission ordered investigations into NPR and PBS over their financial sponsors.

President Donald Trump has announced that he’s imposing a tariff on goods from some of the US’s biggest trade partners: Canada, Mexico, and China. Under the executive orders signed on February 1st, Canada and Mexico will face a 25 percent tariff, while goods from China will be subject to a 10 percent tax. Energy resources from Canada will also have a lower 10 percent tariff.

Trump positioned the tariffs as a way to “halt the flood of poisonous drugs into the United States,” referring to fentanyl. The change will have a big impact on the cost of a wide variety of goods imported from each country, including electronics, produce, clothing, and much more.

Though Trump previously said the tariffs will “enrich” citizens, consumers are expected to bear the brunt of the fees as they typically lead to higher prices. Here’s all the latest news on Trump’s tariffs.

• Trump imposes sweeping tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China
• Canadian officials have reportedly been notified of tariffs.
• Trump says he’ll put tariffs on imported chips ‘in the near future’

U.S. senator says Musk's access to Treasury systems represents a "national security risk."

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X is now suing more advertisers in an antitrust lawsuit focusing on what the company’s CEO Linda Yaccarino has claimed is a “systematic illegal boycott.” The company formerly known as Twitter first filed the lawsuit against the World Federation of Advertisers and its brand safety initiative the Global Alliance of Responsible Media in August 2024. […]

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The US is officially imposing tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. President Donald Trump announced that goods imported from Mexico and Canada will face a 25 percent tariff, while goods from China will face a 10 percent tariff. There will also be a lower 10 percent tariff on energy resources from Canada. In a series of posts on X announcing the tariffs, the administration claimed they were happening to “hold China, Mexico, and Canada accountable for their promises to halt the flood of poisonous drugs into the United States” while repeatedly referencing fentanyl.

The tariffs are set to go into effect on Tuesday, February 4th, according to The New York Times. They’re expected to have an impact on a huge swath of goods, ranging from the electronics we use every day to necessities like clothing, pharmaceuticals, and lithium batteries.

With tariffs in place, the company importing the goods is the one that pays the additional fee — not the exporting country, as Trump has often claimed. These additional fees are typically passed to the consumer in the form of higher prices.

“This was done through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) because of the major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs killing our Citizens, including fentanyl,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “We need to protect Americans, and it is my duty as President to ensure the safety of all.”

Tariffs were one of Trump’s major campaign promises, and he’s floated additional ones, like a tax on semiconductors from Taiwan. (He’s also made threats against Denmark and Colombia.) During Trump’s inauguration speech, the president said he will “immediately begin the overhaul” of the US trade system. “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”

Update, February 1st: Added information about timing.

Microsoft is getting rid of the VPN offered through Microsoft Defender. As spotted by Windows Latest, the company updated its support pages for privacy protection, its built-in VPN, to notify users that the service will end on February 28. The VPN was bundled with Microsoft Defender, which is available to anyone with a personal or family Microsoft 365 subscription, and it offered private browsing by “routing your internet traffic through Microsoft servers,” up to the monthly data limit of 50GB.

In a statement about the decision posted on the support page, Microsoft said, “Our goal is to ensure you, and your family remain safer online. We routinely evaluate the usage and effectiveness of our features. As such, we are removing the privacy protection feature and will invest in new areas that will better align to customer needs.” Android users might still see the Microsoft Defender VPN profile in their settings after the expiration date, which they’ll need to remove manually if they want it gone. “Action is not required by Windows, iOS, and macOS users,” Microsoft notes.

The company also says this is the only feature getting killed off for now. According to Microsoft, “device protection and identity theft and credit monitoring (US) features will continue.”

The seventh test flight of SpaceX's gigantic Starship rocket came to a disappointing end a little more than two weeks ago. The in-flight failure of the rocket's upper stage, or ship, about eight minutes after launch on January 16 rained debris over the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Atlantic Ocean.

Amateur videos recorded from land, sea, and air showed fiery debris trails streaming overhead at twilight, appearing like a fireworks display gone wrong. Within hours, posts on social media showed small pieces of debris recovered by residents and tourists in the Turks and Caicos. Most of these items were modest in size, and many appeared to be chunks of tiles from Starship's heat shield.

Unsurprisingly, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded Starship and ordered an investigation into the accident on the day after the launch. This decision came three days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Elon Musk's close relationship with Trump, coupled with the new administration's appetite for cutting regulations and reducing the size of government, led some industry watchers to question whether Musk's influence might change the FAA's stance on SpaceX.

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Wheels aims to be your all-in-one digital skate journal, allowing you (presuming you’re a skater) to track all things skating. It helps track your rides, your skateboards, and offers a clean interface to manage it all.