Trump-GOP Hiding Federal Data So Nobody Will Know the Depth of the Destruction They Are Sowing

In recent weeks, efforts by the Trump administration to conceal statistics and data from the public have made headlines—from the US Department of Justice's decision to delete a 2024 study that showed right-wing extremists are behind the vast majority of ideologically driven killings in the US, contrary to the White House's repeated claims about violence from the left, to President Donald Trump's firing of a top economist after an unfavorable jobs report that he said was released to hurt him politically.

In a new report Monday, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) detailed how Trump's overt politicization of data has combined with funding cuts to make it harder for experts—and the public that's impacted by the Trump administration's agenda—to see how those very policies are impacting households across the country.

"Without sufficient funding and freedom from political interference, the federal statistical system as we know it—and our ability to make economic and policy decisions based in reality—are in jeopardy," said CBPP bsenior research analyst Victoria Hunter Gibney and vice president for housing and income security Cara Brumfield.

The report warns of "disappearing federal data"—both information that has been surreptitiously yanked from public view and data that the administration has announced will no longer be available, like the US Department of Agriculture annual Household Food Security reports.

As Common Dreams reported last week, the agency called the survey "redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous" and claimed they have "failed to present anything more than subjective, liberal fodder," as it said it would stop publishing the data—the federal government's main source of information on hunger.

"Without data, it is also going to be hard not only to fact-check Trump and his cronies but to measure the (most likely horrific) impact of Trump’s policies."

The decision followed the Republican Party's passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which includes the biggest-ever cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) at a time when more than 47 million Americans—including 1 in 5 children—are facing food insecurity.

In addition to preemptively rejecting research that would have shown the impact of the GOP's SNAP cuts, the administration has shown no interest in tracking weather disasters via its Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database, which was discontinued in May; the effects of crime on LGBTQ+ Americans via National Crime Victimization Survey; and even the existence of LGBTQ+ communities via the National Health Interview Survey.

The administration has also stopped the federal government from collecting data by overseeing mass layoffs across the public servant workforce, with the Department of Health and Human Services placing researchers with the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System on administrative leave in April—ending the government's accounting of maternal mortality numbers. HHS also laid off the analysts who worked on federal poverty guidelines that are used to calculate eligibility for parts of Medicaid as well as nutrition and home energy assistance.

In a multitude of ways, the CBPP said, the administration is "suppressing data that would reveal the harmful effects of the Republican megabill’s deep cuts and leaving families’ struggles harder to track."

The report also warns that "brain drain" is worsening the US Census Bureau's ability to collect population data that helps determine communities' representation in Congress, federal funding allocation, and plan community services. Former Census Bureau Director Robert Santos left halfway through his five-year term shortly after Trump took office in January. Santos spearheaded efforts to make the survey more inclusive and emphasized rebuilding trust with immigrant and Latino communities after Trump, during his first term, pushed to include a citizenship question on the survey.

A top economist at the Census Bureau, Ron Jarmin, was also replaced this month by Trump appointee George Cook, who has "no prior government experience and no advanced training in statistical methods," the CBPP said.

The Republican Party is currently pushing to further weaken efforts to count the population of the US, with the House Appropriations Committee reporting out legislation this month to officially designate the decennial census as voluntary and drastically limit efforts to follow up with nonrespondents. Mandatory participation is not enforced, but the Census Bureau has found that response rates plummet when the survey is officially designated as voluntary.

The proposed change would "seriously exacerbate risks to data quality from nonresponse bias," said the CBPP.

The same bill reported out by the House committee proposed slashing $40 million from the Census Bureau budget, impacting the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which collects data on a number of economic well-being indicators and "enables policymakers to understand how proposed laws will change eligibility and costs."

The reduced version of SIPP that would be funded by the bill "is unlikely to provide the uniquely rich content (such as month-by-month income data) and structure (such as following children as they move between different caregivers’ homes) that allow the current SIPP to answer policymakers’ questions about families, their needs, and the programs that serve them," said the group.

The CBPP released its analysis as Liza Featherstone wrote at The New Republic that the president is "waging a catastrophic war on data" that is "fundamental to Trump and his authoritarian regime."

Trump's destructive cuts to agencies and surveys that collect crucial data have been paired with numerous baseless claims by the president and his allies—that Tylenol taken in pregnancy causes autism, that violence is surging in cities where he plans to deploy federal troops, and that transgender people disproportionately commit mass shootings and violence.

"It will be increasingly hard for correctives on such points to get traction, however, since Trump’s administration has greatly reduced its own ability to collect and disseminate accurate information about crime," wrote Featherstone.

"Without data, it is also going to be hard not only to fact-check Trump and his cronies but to measure the (most likely horrific) impact of Trump’s policies," she added. "That too is almost certainly intentional—or at least very convenient for him."