America’s official data trove is quietly shrinking, and nobody in charge is explaining why. A Guardian investigation by reporters Amy Qin and Flávio Pessoa found that the Trump administration has deleted at least 28 federal datasets and altered 338 more since January 2025, touching public health, education, and safety records across more than 60 agencies.
Public health data takes the hardest hit
Health surveillance absorbed the heaviest losses. CDC systems tracking HIV, violent deaths, and intimate-partner violence quietly dropped their gender-identity questions, and SAMHSA’s Drug Abuse Warning Network, which flags emerging overdose trends, simply stopped updating.
“These data are critical for identifying emerging epidemics,” says Thomas Babor, professor emeritus of public health sciences at the University of Connecticut.
The tally comes from dataindex.us, a nonpartisan tracker co-founded by Denice Ross, the Biden administration’s former chief data scientist. “We’re at a very vulnerable point as a nation,” she warns.
Related on the SLP
Missing or rewritten data doesn’t just disappear — it blinds scientists, doctors, and policymakers who rely on it. When the numbers go dark, so does the nation’s early-warning system for the next health crisis.
|
Related on the SLP
Trump’s Ideological corruption of science: Political appointees censor formerly independent CDC report documenting soaring bird flu cases
|
