Agriculture Department staff told to 'unpublish' pages focused on climate change

Public affairs personnel at the Agriculture Department were told to “unpublish” pages focused on climate change, according to guidelines obtained by The Hill.

The Hill obtained an email sent to the department’s public affairs directors on Friday that instructed them to “Archive or Unpublish landing pages focused on climate change.”

It said that climate change pages should not be completely deleted in accordance with federal records retention requirements. 

The Friday email also reiterated Thursday guidance instructing agencies to “identify all web content related to climate change and document it in a spreadsheet” for the office of communications to review. 

“For each piece of content, include the title, link, and your recommendation on how the content should be handled,” the directive said. 

The directions to scrub climate-related content were first reported by Politico.

As of early Friday evening, pages related to climate change and the department’s “Climate Hubs” remained online. 

The directive mirrors efforts during the first Trump administration to remove climate-related pages at the Environmental Protection Agency. 

President Trump himself has repeatedly and incorrectly claimed climate change is a hoax and downplayed the anticipated impacts of the warming planet.