Our data are disappearing. Here's why it matters for us all

Written by Sheri Booms Holm, Allison Liuzzi, Jennifer McCleary, Stephanie Nelson-Dusek, and Jessie Austin O'Neill

In just the first 21 days of his second term, Donald Trump has signed a slew of executive orders that have resulted in the sudden erasure of data and information we need and use to make informed, efficient decisions about our shared quality of life. These executive orders have specifically targeted data related to gender, sexuality, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Thousands of web pages, reports, and data files have been intentionally removed from federal websites to align with the new administration’s guidelines. Ongoing research that covers everything from cancer medication to mental health treatment has been stalled or canceled altogether. This means that access to critical information is under immediate threat, at the same time the need for good research, planning, and data-based decision-making has never been greater. Read on to learn more about what’s happening, why it matters, and what you can do.

Wait…what’s going on?

Since Friday, January 31, 2025, the New York Times reports that more than 8,000 pages have been removed from federal agency websites, including thousands of pages from the Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other federal agencies. The Washington Post reports that web pages were intentionally and broadly scrubbed of references to gender and sexuality (including more than 20 related words and phrases), diversity, inclusion, and equity to align with two recent executive orders (read them here and here). As a result, the public has lost access to important, taxpayer-funded information on health care guidelines and recommendations, tools to assess risk during local disasters, national survey data on physical and mental health, and demographics for specific communities.

In just two weeks, our team of researchers at Wilder Research has received numerous messages from colleagues across the country asking for help finding federal data files, user manuals, codebooks, and reports that they discovered were no longer available. This is just the research space. Professionals in other domains—government, business, philanthropy, nonprofits, health care, and advocacy—are collectively advocating for the immediate restoration of suppressed public data and information to inform the work they do.

The consequences of this targeted removal of federal information are serious.

1. Erasure of specific topics and communities in federal information, data sources, and reports does not mean that these topics and communities cease to exist. For example, in 2018, Scientific American reported that “During the first year of the Trump administration, the words ‘climate change’ and ‘carbon’ [were] stripped from government websites across a wide range of agencies.” This, of course, does not mean that climate change is non-existent or that it has been solved. Since that time, the United States has experienced the devastating impacts of climate change through multiple extreme weather events. Likewise, refusing to acknowledge “transgender” as a category does not mean that transgender people have vanished. We simply have less reliable information on which to base sound, evidence-based decisions that will improve quality of life for all communities.
2. This may only be the beginning. National reporting suggests that gender, diversity, equity, and inclusion were the broad parameters guiding removal of information that started in late January. The cancellation of Department of Education contracts that use data to fund public schools heralds the targeting of other potential topics such as climate, energy, environment, and public safety.

Why does it matter to me?

You and your communities rely on these data, reports, and sources of information.

Are you a taxpayer? You paid for this information and it belongs to all of us. The Association of Public Data Users explains, “The loss is not abstract: Among other things, data lost […] helped people address urgent issues like teen mental health, bullying, and violence prevention. Put quite simply, [these] actions to remove taxpayer-funded data from the public domain impacts everyone in the United States, directly contradicts the mission of the federal statistical system, and robs the public of a benefit paid for by them.”

Do you receive government services? Each year, data are used to inform the distribution of federal funding for services like housing, health care, education and school lunch programs, nutrition and food assistance, and infrastructure. (To the tune of more than $2.1 trillion nationally and $34 billion in Minnesota!) Data are also used to evaluate and improve upon these services.

How are you represented? Census data and federal rules around who “counts” are used to redraw congressional and state legislative districts every 10 years.

Where and how do you receive health care? Data about the most effective forms of treatment and therapy are essential to making sure you get effective health care. Health care providers, clinics, hospitals, and social service supports are planned, sustained, funded, and consolidated based, in part, on population and vital statistics data.

Are you a Compass user? The goal of Minnesota Compass is to provide quality, trustworthy data about Minnesotans for Minnesotans. Most of the data on Compass come from federal programs at agencies like the Census Bureau, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and others. We rely on these data programs to bring you information about the quality of life topics that matter to you: poverty, income, housing affordability, labor force participation, health care coverage, and prevalence of chronic health conditions (to name a few). We rely on these data programs to bring you information about who we are by age, sex, race, ethnicity, disability status, immigrant group, and cultural community.