Trump’s War on Public Data

History of Government Data Collection

Government data collection in the U.S. dates back to the founding era. The Constitution mandates a population census every ten years to determine congressional representation, a process that has evolved into a vast data infrastructure vital to the allocation of federal funds. As the country industrialized, data collection expanded: the Bureau of Labor Statistics, established in 1913, began publishing key indicators on jobs, wages, and inflation, shaping labor policy and economic planning. The National Center for Education Statistics grew from a basic count of school enrollment in the 19th century to a record of literacy, academic performance, and early childhood development.

Another critical point in our public data story is the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Federal agencies began collecting more disaggregated data on race, housing, employment, and health, transforming statistics from mere tools of efficiency into instruments for equity and civil rights enforcement. Over time, public data became central to Americans’ understanding of their economy, society, and government.

Stats and Why They Matter

Public data is the backbone of self-governance. It tells us who we are, how we live, and how well government policies are working. Far from being neutral, statistics are the raw material of democracy: they allow citizens to hold elected officials accountable, identify disparities, and tie real-world conditions to political decisions. From evaluating school performance and monitoring inflation to measuring climate change and public health trends, public data makes government legible to the people it serves.

It also shapes how money and power are distributed. Census figures inform congressional redistricting and the allocation of billions in federal aid. Employment and inflation stats influence interest rates and business investment. Undercounting or gutting data collection tends to disproportionately impact poor, rural, and minority communities—making them less visible and less served.

Data Category	Agency	What They Measure	Why It Matters
Demographics	U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey	Population, race, age, housing, income	Determines representation, allocates funding, tracks equity
Labor & Economy	Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis	Unemployment, wages, inflation, GDP	Guides policy, shows inequality, triggers support programs
Public Health	CDC, National Center for Health Statistics	Mortality, disease rates, access to care	Informs public health response, targets disparities
Education	National Center for Education Statistics	Enrollment, graduation, test scores, literacy	Drives school funding and academic equity policy
Environment & Climate	EPA, NOAA	Pollution, air/water quality, emissions, climate data	Supports disaster prep, farmers and fishermen, provides necessary weather information, helps keep our air and water safe
Crime & Justice	FBI, Bureau of Justice Statistics	Crime rates, incarceration, racial disparities in enforcement	Shapes criminal justice reform, informs civil rights enforcement

Why Attack Public Data

Authoritarian regimes aim to control not just people, but reality itself. For strongmen who claim they alone can fix a nation’s problems, contradictory facts aren’t just inconvenient, they’re dangerous to their agenda. To consolidate power, these leaders don’t just reject facts, they replace them with convenient fiction. An ill-informed public is easier to mislead, creating a structure for such regimes to extol the successes of their rule.

Trump’s antagonistic relationship with facts is well documented. His most egregious attacks on reality aren’t just rhetorical. They threaten physical safety and American democracy. They target the ways we define what we know about the country and ourselves. Trump’s assault on public data is not a side project, it’s a core feature of his authoritarian approach to governance. By hollowing out federal statistics, limiting information gathering, and redacting inconvenient reports, the Trump administration is warping reality to suit its political narrative. The goal isn’t just to obscure the effects of the president’s policies, it’s to prevent the public from seeing them at all.

Though underresourced for years, Trump has accelerated the degradation of the nation’s data infrastructure. Cuts to sample sizes, staffing, and statistical products erode the quality of reports that businesses, lawmakers, and voters rely on to make consequential decisions. Once data is corrupted, it becomes harder to unwind fact from fiction, leaving critical blind spots in our understanding of the country. Building data infrastructure took generations; rebuilding those systems, and the faith we have in it, could take generations more.

The loss of public data isn’t just a transparency issue, it’s a direct threat to the public’s ability to know, to question, and to decide. When access to shared empirical reality disappears, so does the foundation of democracy. Without reliable data, self-governance becomes nearly impossible. Consensus fractures. Policy failure, corruption, and inequality become harder to see, let alone fix. A population cut off from facts becomes easier to mislead, easier to divide, and easier to control. Worsening crises become caricatured as inexplicable phenomena rather than the consequences of deliberate policy choices. That’s the point. Trump fills the void with the information needed to quench his authoritarian ambition.

The Trump Admin’s Attack on Public Data

Last updated July 1, 2025

Health and Safety

• More than a dozen data gathering programs tracking death and disease across government health agencies were apparently eliminated in the DOGE-led federal purge during Trump’s first 100 days. At the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the personnel terminated were tracking abortions, pregnancies, job-related injuries, lead poisonings, sexual violence, and youth smoking.

• The Trump administration took down thousands of CDC-maintained webpages containing health data and public guidelines. While the pages were quietly restored days later, no explanation was given for what information had been changed or removed. Many of the affected pages addressed politically sensitive topics such as contraception, transgender health, and climate change, which have been frequently targeted by the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers.

• The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System lost its entire 20-person staff. The CDC program collects comprehensive data on the health behaviors and outcomes of pregnant women before, during, and after childbirth, allowing researchers to investigate maternal mortality. Death during childbirth rose last year; elimination of the PRAMS could exacerbate that trend. Staff responsible for collecting data on in vitro fertilization and abortions were also terminated.

• The administration eliminated staff from the Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, which researchers used to map potential cancer clusters and monitor weather-related illnesses. Data also disappeared from the Environmental Justice Index, a tool that aggregates information from multiple agencies to assess the cumulative impact of pollution on human health and equity.
  
  Additionally, the administration removed data from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s Social Vulnerability Index (ATSDR SVI), a database and mapping tool designed to identify and quantify communities facing heightened social vulnerability. The SVI helps public health officials and local planners prepare for and respond to emergencies in ways that reduce human suffering, economic loss, and health disparities.

• Data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) was removed from its website. The program tracks health-related behaviors and experiences that contribute to death and disability among youth and adults. The system monitors changes over time, identifies emerging public health issues, and informs the planning and evaluation of youth health programs.

• Government staffing cuts eliminated 85% of the staff at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the small agency responsible for tracking job-related illnesses and deaths, and making recommendations on how to prevent them. Research and data collection has improved workplace safety in manufacturing, mining, and firefighting by identifying physical safety hazards and workplace diseases, and designing treatments and equipment to mitigate them. The NIOSH also ran a firefighter cancer registry that helped 9/11 first responders receive medical treatment; the continuation of the registry remains in question due to staffing cuts.

• Sweeping layoffs enacted by HHS Secretary RFK Jr. have jeopardized programs designed to track accidental injuries and death. The entire team responsible for analyzing injury data and maintaining a database were fired, leaving researchers with less data to know “what is killing us”. The electronic surveillance system that reviewed and categorized ER-injury records was completely shut down. As the only federal government data source providing real-time monitoring on non-fatal injuries, the Consumer Product Safety Commission relied on the system to track injuries caused by consumer products.

• RFK Jr. laid off the 17-person team in charge of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which tracked trends in substance abuse and mental health disorders, the only of its kind in the country. The survey informed doctors, researchers, and policymakers on best practices for treatment and prevention, while also allocating funds to programs addressing these issues. Staff working on the National Youth Tobacco Survey were also eliminated, killing off a program that helped reduce teen smoking rates to their lowest in 25 years.

• The Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families is weeks behind on updating its national database of child welfare cases, following layoffs that eliminated the team responsible for collecting and maintaining the data.

• The team maintaining AtlasPlus, the CDC’s HIV and STD tracking tool, was laid off.

• Transgender status is no longer recorded in health-tracking systems, including those monitoring violent deaths and youth risk behaviors—making it harder to measure the heightened risks transgender people face, experts warn.

• Efforts to upgrade the CDC’s 22-year-old disease tracking and mapping system were derailed, and the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, created during the COVID-19 pandemic to predict disease trends, was affected by staffing cuts. At the time, it was actively working to forecast a measles outbreak across multiple states. (See more in our Measles Tracker)

• CDC reports on the bird flu were paused in late January, putting medical experts at a disadvantage in fighting its spread. (See more in our Bird Flu Tracker)

Climate and Environment

• Rule changes at the Environmental Protection Agency will end greenhouse gas emission reporting requirements for power plants, oil refineries, and other industrial facilities, making it more difficult to gauge the effectiveness of policy designed to slow climate change and related disasters.
  • The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program collects and documents data on the amount of GHGs released into the atmosphere by individual facilities, and makes the data public to guide policymakers in decision-making and constitutes a significant portion of information the international climate governing body uses to tally global greenhouse gas pollution. Freeing the biggest polluters from reporting requirements makes it more difficult to hold facilities and industry leaders accountable, while also crippling the international community’s ability to rein in the worst effects of climate change. (See more in our Environment Tracker.)

• The EPA took down EJScreen, an interactive mapping tool that allowed people to track changes in industrial pollution at the community level.

• Cutbacks at the National Weather Service are forcing it to reduce the number of weather balloons the agency can launch, which gather enormous amounts of real-time data to improve forecasting. Staff reductions at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will similarly affect the quality and quantity of weather and climate data collected, and funding lapses resulted in regional office websites going dark. Concerns over these cutbacks are only rising as the U.S. enters its hurricane season and dozens have already lost their lives to weather-related disasters. (See more in our memo: Trump’s Attacks on Weather and Climate Science Put Us All In Danger.)

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration retired the Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database, a resource that tracked weather related disasters totalling $1 billion or more in overall damages and/or costs. Researchers, policymakers, insurers, and homeowners used the database to prepare for and recover from emergencies and track the financial cost of climate change on the public and government.
  
  NOAA will no longer publish new content to Climate.gov, the agency website dedicated to climate communication, education and engagement. The 10-person staff responsible for creating content and maintain the site were released from their government contracts in late May.

• The Trump administration dismissed nearly 400 scientists and cut funding for the National Climate Assessment, pausing work on the next iteration due in 2027. As the most comprehensive source on climate change impacts in the US, the NCA informs decisions on infrastructure, wildfire protection, agriculture, and environmental litigation. The reports also underpins key environmental regulations, which could be undermined or eliminated in court if a new, science-based report not available to defend them.

• More than 100 employees at the U.S. Energy Information Administration resigned or were fired as part of the government downsizing led by DOGE. The mass exodus comes as reports show the expansion of clean energy and as the Trump administration refocuses energy policy on gas and fossil fuels.
  • IEA data significantly impacts global oil prices, and the departures jeopardized the world’s most closely followed energy report. The 2025 edition of the International Energy Outlook, the biennial report on global energy trends, was scrapped. Angelina LaRose, an EIA assistant administrator, attributed the cancellation to the loss of staff.

• The Trump administration shut down the website for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which housed reports and data on the effects of global warming in the United States. The program was created under a 1990 law that also mandated climate assessments every four years, though in April the administration cut personnel and funding for the assessment program. The website also published studies on agriculture and human health, and educational media on topics related to climate change.

Economy and Labor

• Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick suggested that he plans to remove data on government spending when calculating U.S. GDP. This came in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Musk’s so-called Department of Efficiency could result in an economic downturn. The new method of calculating the country’s economic output would prove to be politically convenient for Trump: it would have the effect of obscuring the impact of the administration’s economic policies on the overall economy, especially in regard to the massive firings and spending cuts enacted by DOGE.

• The Department of Labor has scaled back key data collection efforts that feed into monthly inflation estimates, weakening the quality of economic reports relied on by businesses, policymakers, and the Federal Reserve. These cuts follow the elimination of hundreds of gauges tracking wholesale prices across industries, while other data sets are at risk of disappearing altogether. Economists warn that degrading the nation’s economic data increases the risk of poor policy decisions and poor market forecasting, especially as the Trump administration pushes an agenda that could lead to a recession. Sloppily collected or poorly curated data affects the Federal Reserve’s ability to set interest rates and businesses’ capacity to make informed decisions.

• Trump administration officials delayed and redacted a government forecast predicting an increase in the U.S. trade deficit in farm goods, a projection that contradicts the administration’s claims that its economic policy has been successful in reducing trade imbalances. The report’s written analysis was blocked from publication due to its politically inconvenient truth, raising concerns of the administration manipulating or hiding credible and partial government data. 

Immigration and Civil Rights

• The DHS’s Office of Homeland Security Statistics has yet to update its monthly tallies on deportations and immigration enforcement, making it difficult to assess the impact of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

• Proposed changes to the State Department’s country reports mandating staff to only meet minimum legal requirements will make it harder to track foreign governments’ abuses and violations. Per NPR, reports will no longer include criticisms of poor prison conditions, government corruption, or restrictive political policies like limiting peaceful assembly or preventing free and fair elections. The State Department also plans to remove any references to DEI and violence and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people.

• The Justice Department deleted a database tracking instances of federal police misconduct. Experts said it improved public safety by preventing officers charged with misconduct from starting over at new agencies with clean records.

Education

• The Department of Education’s main data collection and analysis arm had staff cut from 100 down to just three, severely crippling the department’s ability to implement and evaluate long-term studies as well as track enrollment in K-12 schools and higher education. 

U.S. Census

• There is growing concern over a “brain drain” in the U.S. Census Bureau, as staff departures, hiring freezes, and budget cuts under the Trump administration threaten the agency’s capacity to maintain critical data operations and thus fulfill its Constitutional mandate. These setbacks have delayed or disrupted key surveys and planning efforts for the 2030 Census, which plays a pivotal role in allocating federal funding and determining political representation through congressional redistricting. With diminished staff and leadership in vital divisions, experts warn that the reliability of demographic, economic, and social statistics is at risk.