According to records obtained by Insider through a Freedom of Information Act request, Donald Trump's White House blocked dozens of federal agencies from creating new websites to aid homeless people, fight human traffickers, and help people vote.
At a time when Trump was hostile to his own administration, many agencies requested new websites.
The Department of Defense, Department of Labor, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Central Intelligence Agency, and Environmental Protection Agency were all rejected by the Office of Management and Budget.
HumanTrafficking.gov is one of the websites that the Office of Management and Budget rejected.
The ability of government agencies to provide and market services to an American public that's all but universally connected to the internet is enhanced by custom ".gov" website domain.
Without them, agencies can still create new sections on their primary websites, but with long and unmemorable subdomain names, which are not ideal for public service announcements or billboards.
According to the documents obtained by Insider, there were no reasons why the Office of Management and Budget rejected or accepted the agency's website request.
The Office of Management and Budget did not respond to Insider's questions.
The representatives for Trump didn't reply to many messages.
According to federal records, the Trump White House's practice of regularly blocking and slow-walking federal agencies' website requests stands in stark contrast to that of the Biden White House, which has approved almost every request it's received.
The records obtained by Insider show that of the 105 ".gov" websites requests, 60 were accepted, 44 were denied, and one was pending.
Between January 21, 2021, and September 9, 2022, the ".gov" website received 95 requests from Biden's Office of Management and Budget, of which 85 were accepted, four were denied, and six were withdrawn.
More than a dozen federal agencies had their custom.gov website domain requests rejected by the White House.
The officials at the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Labor refused to speak. The Department of Agriculture did not respond to inquiries.
They didn't give much insight into why they sought new.gov websites or why the Trump White House denied them.
For the creation of a new tool that would provide information about housing, shelter, healthcare and clothing resources in communities across the country, Housing and Urban Development asked to establish FindShelters.gov.
The agency's request was denied by the Trump administration. The main agency website now contains such information, with resources at a URL of www.hud.gov/homelessness_resources.
There has been a federal-wide effort to limit and reduce the number of public-facing websites. The effort was to cut costs and redundantness.
The CIA asked the White House to approve the website domain Data Transport.gov. The request was rejected by the office of management and budget.
A source said that the domain was registered to support the IC's data services program. The source didn't give any more information.
In March of this year, the Peace Corps asked the Office of Management and Budget to approve PeaceCorpsCN.gov, a website that references its operations in China. The request was rejected by the office of management and budget.
The domain was requested at the time to enhance email and web security.
The Peace Corps began the process of leaving China by early 2020. Since then, the Peace Corps has not updated its website request.
The China post of the Peace Corps was closed.
The United States Agency for International Development-sponsored ProsperAfrica.gov was denied a website request by the White House.
The United States Agency for International Development is trying to mobilize services and resources from across the US government to empower businesses and investors on the African continent.
It took weeks or months for the Office of Management and Budget to be approved, compared to days or hours for the Office of Management and Budget.
During the summer of 2020, the Election Assistance Commission sought approval to create HelpAmericaVote.gov and use it to recruit and coordinate an army of new poll workers, but they were delayed.
There was a lengthy delay. According to an email obtained by Insider, the Office of Management and Budget argued against the creation of a stand-alone website for HelpAmericaVote.gov. As the decision arrived, Trump's claims that the US elections were rigged and fraudulent had grown louder.
The Executive Director of the Election Assistance Commission was frantic.
She was an official in the Office of Management and Budget's Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer at the time. We need the domain.
The HelpAmericaVote.gov website would go live in August 2020, just in time for National Poll Worker Recruitment Day, after the Office of Management and Budget reversed its decision. The Election Assistance Commission said 100,000 people visited the site.
The Election Assistance Commission's request for HelpAmericaVote.gov was rejected by the Office of Management and Budget because the information provided did not justify the creation of a stand-alone site. OMB worked to improve the justification which resulted in approval.
A few custom web domains were approved quickly by Trump's office.
TrumpLibrary.gov, TrumpWhiteHouse.gov, and FlyHealthy.gov all received swift approval.
On October 8, 2020, the General Services Administration proposed creating a website called "Build Back Better.gov", which the Office of Management and Budget approved on the same day.
The cornerstone of Biden's 2020 presidential campaign platform is build back better. The Build Back Better.gov domain was not used by the administration. According to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, it was used by President-elect Biden as part of his official presidential transition website.
The General Services Administration was previously in charge of new federal government websites, but the White House's Office of Management and Budget was put in charge of them in the year 2019.
The General Services Administration told Insider that the Office of Management and Budget decided in February of last year to limit the proliferation of executive branch stand alone.gov websites.
According to federal records, the office denied as many as it accepted during the second half of last year.
The decisions were made behind closed doors.
Insider filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking the Office of Management and Budget for records relating to the creation of.gov websites. The agencies' requests to create.gov websites were disapproved by the Office of Management and Budget.
Office Management and Budget officials denied Insider's request for the Freedom of Information Act.
The person appealed the decision. In October of last year, the Office of Management and Budget acknowledged that the records Insider had requested existed.
The Office of Management and Budget did not immediately provide other requested records, such as documents explaining why officials approved or denied a particular website.
There are eight websites that are pending. Student debt relief is a priority of the Department of Education and seven of them are related to it.
As of November, the websites were not functional.
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