Since Trump took office, how many times have you asked yourself “What fresh hell is this?” Today is one of those days I feel I’m asking every five minutes.
Our current administration has taken down from its website a 2014 report published during the Obama administration detailing facts and information on sexual violence.
Civil rights attorney Alexandra Brodsky first pointed out the removal of the report, “Rape And Sexual Assault: Renewed Call To Action,” Wednesday morning.
Removal of the report follows other disturbing disappearances. One of the first things Trump’s staff did was take down the LGBT rights page, which was removed on inauguration day. That followed the removal of any mention of climate change.
I get it, those last two fly in the face of the conservative agenda. Sure, nearly all scientists agree we have a major environmental issue now affecting our entire globe, but profits over people, right? And gay people, well don’t get me started on the hypocrisy there. But those are hard-line issues the conservative party has built walled gardens around.
Sexual violence? Trump has his own grabby issues here, of course. But total removal of a major report doesn’t make sense in terms of the conservative agenda.
The report can still be found on Know Your IX’s website, which was created by Obama’s White House Council on Women and Girls, who put it together in partnership with Vice President Joe Biden.
Much of what’s in the report includes important facts and government-funded research to understand the effects of sexual violence.
The removal of the report is “particularly troublesome when we know that the administration is actively considering undermining important policies for survivors,” Brodsky said in an interview with the Huffington Post. “…like those reaffirmed by the Obama administration regarding Title IX.”
Under Title IX, a college can be held legally accountable for not protecting students from sexual assault and sexual discrimination. However, there have been multiple reports Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has been looking to roll back the guidelines found in Title IX.
Though Brodsky only discovered the removal of the report yesterday, it may have disappeared alongside other pages like the LGBT rights page and climate change did on inauguration day.
Twitter user Dawn P. McCleskey pointed out as much in a tweet reply to Brodsky:
We’ve reached out to the White House for comment but have yet to hear back. It’s worth pointing out, however, that it’s common for any new administration to make some changes to the website once the new leader is in charge.
We can only surmise for now what issue the Trump administration has with the report, but perhaps it has to do with erasure of anything not from this current administration — Trump doesn’t want to give the American people access to that information because Trump didn’t put his hands on it.