In January, agencies scrambled to scrub websites that made references to transgender individuals or “diversity, equity, and inclusion” efforts, with the goal of being in alignment with Trump’s executive orders. The Office of Personnel Management ordered agency heads to remove “gender ideology” from websites; this resulted in actions such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removing information on contraception, facts about HIV-positive and transgender individuals, and research showing that transgender youth face higher rates of bullying, depression, and other issues. Data from the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, which tracks health issues for young people, was removed entirely.
Zach Shelley, an attorney for the Public Citizen Litigation Group and lead counsel on the case to restore those health agencies’ web pages, said that most of the web pages are back up and that “we’re still working with our clients to identify additional websites” on which they may rely.
“When you deny public health officials access to that information, it means you’re increasing the risk of disease outbreaks. You’re slowing responses to them,” Shelley said. “That means more people sick, more people suffering, more people dying.”
Indeed, the shrinking of the federal workforce could have significant effects on the future of data access more broadly, said Amy O’Hara, executive director of the Federal Statistical Research Data Center at the McCourt School for Public Policy. These range from the potential loss of experts collating information in an apolitical manner to no longer having the resources to conduct research thoroughly, to demand for information decreasing because of the reduction in numbers of government employees.
“Politicization could occur if there weren’t those employees holding the line, or there was a reduction in staff, and you just don’t have enough personnel to do the normal [quality control] on a data release,” O’Hara continued.
“Those data are in demand by people who need them for the programs that they run, or grant applications, or for research projects that are going to result in people getting their degrees,” said O’Hara. “It’s the pipeline of people that build knowledge in the country, and they need access to timely, accurate data and data that have not been manipulated in any way.”
The Trump administration has also targeted the Education Department, with the functional dismantling of the Institute of Education Sciences, an independent research organization within the agency. This week, Trump said he would like the Education Department to be “closed immediately,” calling it a “con job.” (In her Senate confirmation hearing this week, Trump’s nominee for education secretary, Linda McMahon, said that “it is not the president’s goal to defund the programs, only to have it operate more efficiently.”)
“Before the institute, educational research was fragmented, ideologically driven and inaccessible to parents and teachers. Findings were buried in books or locked behind paywalls. The institute broke that cycle,” argued University of Notre Dame psychology professor Nicole M. McNeil and Columbia University psychology professor Robert Stuart Siegler in an article in The Conversation.
Beyond lawsuits, it’s unclear how the reshaping of data collection by the executive can be halted. Democratic lawmakers have raised the alarm over the loss of research and the access provided to DOGE, but they are in the minority in Congress and have little sway. Some Republicans have expressed concerns over cuts to NIH. Nonetheless, the vast majority of GOP senators voted to approve Trump’s nominee for HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; Senator Susan Collins told reporters that Kennedy had pledged to “reexamine” the cuts.
“We have these expectations for data coming out in the future. We just assume it’s going to be there, and it’s now in jeopardy,” O’Hara said.
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