Hard Truths

We look at how the Trump administration

 deals with unfavorable data

By Evan Gorelick

Aug. 13, 2025, 6:53 a.m. ET

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, an obscure economic arm of the federal government, is getting a new leader. Trump has nominated an economist from the conservative Heritage Foundation to replace the bureau’s chief, whom he fired after a less-than-stellar jobs report.
It’s hard to get bad news — so the administration is trying not to. When the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that hiring this year was more sluggish than it had previously reported (revisions like that are normal), the president said without evidence that the new figures were “rigged” to make him look bad. Economists across the political spectrum worry that his nominee will proffer friendlier data.

Trump has previously canned scientists, closed databases and otherwise fettered the delivery of inconvenient facts. Today’s newsletter is about the administration’s efforts, across the government, to throw out troublesome data and silence the people who gather it.

No thanks

Expertise and data can pose problems for any president’s agenda, but Trump has done more than his predecessors to erase the inconvenient facts.

• Climate science. In the name of deregulation, the Trump administration rejected the scientific consensus that greenhouse gases threaten public health. Trump’s budget eliminates funding for a Hawaii lab that has collected climate data for 70 years. The administration is shuttering the E.P.A.’s scientific research arm. It also retired an extreme-weather project that tracked the costs of natural disasters and said it would stop updating a database that companies use to calculate their emissions.
• The census. Trump has ordered a new population count that excludes illegal immigrants; his allies hope it will lift their allotment of seats in Congress. It may not have that result — and Trump may not have the authority to call a mid-decade recount — but the census affects federal funding and tells us who we are as a nation. The administration also ended several Census Bureau surveys, disbanded expert advisory committees and pushed out 1,300 employees.
• Gender and D.E.I. The government scrubbed more than 8,000 web pages after Trump signed executive orders targeting diversity initiatives and what he calls “gender ideology.” In one instance, the administration tried to delete a federal database that included information on whether teens identified as transgender. When a court required that the government keep it online, the C.D.C. added a note: “This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it.”

Be quiet

The president also seems not to like the bearers of bad news. He has intimidated some officials and sacked others. In addition to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Trump administration has targeted:

• Inspectors general. The president has fired or demoted more than 20 people in independent offices responsible for making sure the government works properly. The remaining employees told Luke Broadwater, one of our White House correspondents, that they are now reluctant to pursue investigations that could elicit political blowback.
• The Fed. Trump has repeatedly threatened to oust Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, for refusing to lower interest rates. The independence of central bankers is protected by law, and White House meddling can boost inflation and hurt growth in the long run, writes Colby Smith, who covers the Fed.
• Health officials. Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fired all 17 experts from the C.D.C.’s vaccine advisory committee. They held that vaccines, including Covid shots, were safe and effective. Kennedy disagrees.
• Courts. Judges are supposed to interpret laws impartially, away from political pressures. But Trump has attacked judges who have scuttled his agenda. Last month, the Justice Department filed a misconduct complaint against one who ruled against Trump’s deportation plans.

The payoff

Now there are fewer people in a position to challenge the White House. Trump has fired Justice Department lawyers whom he found too deferential to court orders. He has also axed Democratic members of independent bodies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He filled top posts in the F.B.I. and the Pentagon with MAGA stalwarts who screen for loyalty within their agencies.

Trump’s allies say the president is doing what every leader does: surrounding himself with people he trusts to implement his vision. But as government records and independent officials vanish, it is becoming more difficult to track key data points in American life — H.I.V. infections, school performance and more.

That leaves politicians to find their own data. It’s easy to do when a cherry-picked statistic can prove virtually any point. At a press conference last week, Trump furnished new jobs numbers from a right-wing economist. He said that they proved his economy was better than Joe Biden’s. Trump finally found the data he wanted.

THE LATEST NEWS

D.C. Takeover

At the Washington Monument.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

• About a dozen Trump-deployed National Guard troops appeared near the Washington Monument yesterday evening. They took photos of themselves with visitors, and they left after roughly two hours.
• To justify his takeover of Washington, Trump cited several false and misleading claims about homicides and youth crime. Here’s a fact check.
• Trump said he needed to send in troops to secure the capital. He had a different reaction on Jan. 6, Luke Broadwater writes.

Trump-Putin Summit

• Trump will meet Vladimir Putin at a military base in Anchorage on Friday, a White House official said.
• The German chancellor will convene a video call tomorrow with Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky and several European allies. They have been imploring Trump not to cut a peace deal with Putin behind their backs.
• At a 1945 meeting, the world’s superpowers redrew the European map without input from the affected countries. Some fear a repeat in Alaska, Steven Erlanger writes.
• Russian forces advanced in Ukraine, seeking an edge on the battlefield before the summit.

More on the Trump Administration

• An annual collection of U.S. human rights reports cut or blunted previous references to abuses by close partners of the Trump administration including El Salvador and Israel.
• A federal appeals court gave teams affiliated with DOGE access to potentially sensitive data on millions of Americans, overruling a lower court.
• The head of the U.F.C. said Trump was moving ahead with plans to host a fight at the White House next July 4.
• Mexico has sent 26 people accused of being cartel operatives to the U.S., seemingly to alleviate pressure from Trump to combat the flow of fentanyl across the border.