Hundreds of US government sites go offline

Hundreds of US government websites were offline on Monday, an AFP review showed, including that of the humanitarian agency USAID which President Donald Trump's administration is shutting down.

From a list of nearly 1,400 federal sites provided by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), more than 350 were unavailable on Monday afternoon.

These included sites linked to the departments of defense, commerce, energy, transportation, labor as well the Central Intelligence Agency and the Supreme Court, the review showed.

The exact time when the sites became unavailable was not clear. Nor was it known whether the sites were temporarily offline or taken down at the instruction of Trump's administration.

But the development comes amid the administration's controversial drive to radically shrink the US government.

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Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive and the world's richest person, is leading Trump's federal cost-cutting efforts under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

On Monday, Musk said USAID will be shuttered, calling the agency which runs relief programs in about 120 countries a "criminal organization."

USAID's website was offline as employees were instructed by email not to go to their offices on Monday.

A slew of US government websites, including top public health agencies, have also scrubbed references to LGBTQ after a Trump directive last week instructing them to terminate all programs funded by taxpayers that promote "gender ideology," US media reported.

Trump has already issued executive orders banning diversity, equity and inclusion in the government.

Key information and datasets related to HIV and LGBTQ youth have also disappeared from the website of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), alarming health experts.

On Monday, the CDC's landing pages for both topics said: "The page you're looking for was not found."

"The removal of HIV- and LGBTQ-related resources from the websites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies is deeply concerning and creates a dangerous gap in scientific information and data to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks," the Infectious Diseases Society of America said in a statement.

Public access to this information was "especially important as diseases such as HIV, mpox, sexually transmitted infections and other illnesses threaten public health and impact the entire population," it added.