The Trump administration is reshaping how the federal government collects and releases data, pulling a field long seen as technical and nonpartisan deeper into the president’s broader campaign to control the machinery of government, according to a new analysis.
Trustworthy, apolitical data shapes decisions ranging from how benefits are distributed to how workplace discrimination is investigated and how public health emergencies are handled, but the administration has moved in recent weeks to politicize data sets gathered by agencies across government, reported Axios.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, pressed the Centers for Disease Control to strike two Pennsylvania measles deaths from its public case count, even though the agency had already accepted the state’s determination that the deaths were tied to the outbreak.
Kennedy and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, had publicly traded blame over the deaths beforehand.
Separately, the Commerce Department scrubbed language barring political interference from its scientific integrity policy after the Census Bureau put out a report — quickly amplified by President Donald Trump — alleging 24,000 noncitizens had voted in 2020.
Reporting has since tied members of the report’s team to a Trump-aligned advocacy group America First Institute.
At the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, officials are moving to scrap the EEO-1 reports, which for six decades have required companies to disclose workforce data by race, ethnicity, sex and job title. A Trump-appointed commissioner has argued the requirement burdens employers and disadvantages white workers, part of the administration’s wider push against diversity initiatives.
These recent moves build on earlier ones, including Trump’s firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics chief last year after a soft jobs report and the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to stop regularly releasing detailed deportation statistics.
A tracker maintained by former federal data scientists has logged 38 datasets discontinued since Trump’s return to office, with hundreds more altered.
“The level of politicization in this administration is beyond anything I’ve seen,” said Denice Ross, a former U.S. chief data scientist who now leads the Data Policy Institute at the Federation of American Scientists. “I’ve been doing this work for 25 years.”
White House spokesman Kush Desai told Axios the administration is focused on data that is “timely, accurate, and relevant” and reflects reality rather than funding “ideological pet projects.”
Ross, however, warned the consequences of the shift may not be obvious until it’s too late. “We really take data for granted,” she said. “It’s invisible infrastructure, like a bridge or cell service. We don’t notice until it’s gone.”
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