The Real Victim of Trump’s War on Numbers Is You
The article highlights how the Trump administration has undermined trust in government data by eliminating key datasets, firing officials, and rejecting findings that contradict its narrative. Reliable data is essential for public policy, economic decisions, and government accountability, but many critical programs have been defunded or dismantled. This erosion of data integrity threatens transparency and informed decision-making in American society.
- ▪The Trump administration discontinued datasets including the Drug Abuse Warning Network, Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, and the Farm Labor Survey.
- ▪The annual report on hunger was scrapped, making it difficult to verify claims about reductions in food stamp enrollment.
- ▪The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, tracking nearly 150,000 federal officers, was deleted.
- ▪The commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was fired after Trump deemed the jobs report 'phony'.
- ▪A Federal Reserve study found U.S. firms and consumers bore nearly 90% of the cost of Trump’s tariffs, a finding dismissed by administration appointees.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
new video loaded: The Real Victim of Trump’s War on Numbers Is YoutranscriptBacktranscriptThe Real Victim of Trump’s War on Numbers Is YouAuthoritarians go after data. The president has already started.This Is a story about numbers — “One” “Two” “Three” “Four” “Five” — and what happens when you can no longer trust them. “Six, seven, eight, 10, 11” “Thirty” You see, each year, the U.S. government collects millions of gigabytes of data. You can think of all these numbers like a pair of magical glasses. Put them on, and suddenly, you can see our vast country in detail. [RELAXING MUSIC] At first, the stats might feel scattered — 135,000 cows in Hawaii and 54 ice jams in the last seven months — but keep exploring this data, and you begin to realize how irreplaceable it really is.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at NYT — Opinion.
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