Content and datasets essential for research, policy making, transparency, and accountability began to disappear from US government websites beginning late Friday, January 31, with little information as to why or whether there would be future accessibility.
An unknown number of pages and datasets from agencies across the government have been removed, including from the US Census Bureau, which houses the most complete sets of information on the US population, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which contains national public health surveys and data dashboards. Examples include essential demographic health surveys, AIDS information pages and surveillance dashboards, data on racial disparities, and social vulnerability and environmental justice indices.
These public data are used for research and to inform policy and decision-making across private and public sectors. For instance, Human Rights Watch regularly uses data from these federal agencies to demonstrate human rights impacts of policies in order to hold governments accountable.
The Trump administration is utilizing executive orders and memos to remove public information. One such order directed all departments and agencies to “take down all outward facing media that inculcate or promote gender ideology.” The website currently contains a banner stating it is being “modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.” These memos are part of the administration’s broader anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts to impede racial equity gains and attack policies aimed at addressing systemic racism and sexism. In addition to the removal of datasets, government agencies are also responding to the administration’s directives by automatically removing pronouns from email signatures and removing mentions of women leaders and Indigenous people from NASA’s website.
While some pages have been reinstated, including at the CDC, there has been no comprehensive accounting of what public data was, either temporarily or permanently, removed or restored. Additionally, there has been no effort to restore confidence that all public data will remain accessible or that similar actions won’t re-occur. Congressional leaders should heed the call of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics and demand the complete restoration of any federal data, working with the administration to “prevent any future purge or removal of data.”
After all, deleting data is not just erasing information and statistics, but the history of this country and the progress of its people.
