"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute." -- George Orwell, 1984
Shifra Dayak and Anna Kramer at NOTUS:
NOTUS verified dozens of instances of lapsed federal data to capture the range of information that is no longer being collected, has been paused or is now not available to the public. This is only a small sample of the data collection the Trump administration has made changes to:The Department of Agriculture terminated a report on household food security in September, claiming it was “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous.” Feeding America said it relied on this survey to guide its programs.
Some of these cuts were made without any public fanfare, like the administration’s decision to end DAWN. [Drug Abuse Warning Network] In other cases, agencies slipped the news into routine announcements. And occasionally, like when the White House mandated that questions about gender identity be removed from federal surveys, the administration touted the deletions as quelling “gender ideology extremism.”
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped releasing data on maternal and infant mortality in April 2025 after the administration placed all of the agency staff managing the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System on administrative leave. The data collection resumed in at least some states in July 2025, but recent data contains gaps.
- Trump directed the Justice Department last year to suspend a Biden-era database tracking misconduct by federal law enforcement officers.
- The administration removed questions on gender identity from the National Crime Victimization Survey, the National Health Interview Survey and other surveys. Homeless shelters, mental health hotlines and substance use recovery programs all used this data for policymaking and planning.
- The Department of Homeland Security ended public access in October to its public safety and infrastructure dataset, called Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data.
- The National Center for Education Statistics missed a mandated deadline to release its annual report on the condition of the American education system, and the materials released were lacking in data compared to previous years.
- The Health and Human Services Department’s 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health omitted information about drug use based on race and ethnicity. HHS laid off the team that collected the data, though the agency is reportedly working with a contractor to resume its collection.
- The Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Education and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration no longer allow researchers to apply to access and study their data.
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics produces fewer calculations for its producer price index program and has cut down where it collects data from.