Preserve Federal Data Systems & Public Access to Government Information

I am writing as your constituent to urge you to take immediate action against the Trump administration’s deletion, alteration, and suspension of federal datasets. Recent reporting describes the removal or modification of hundreds of federal data collections, including information about law-enforcement misconduct, violence against children and young people, air pollution, farmworker wages, teacher working conditions, HIV, overdose trends, intimate-partner violence, and the health of LGBTQ+ communities. These are not abstract records. They are essential tools for protecting lives, evaluating government programs, identifying discrimination and abuse, and understanding whether public policies are working. When health surveys stop collecting information about queer and trans people, vulnerable communities become less visible and their needs become easier to ignore. When overdose surveillance is discontinued, doctors and public-health officials lose the ability to identify emerging epidemics quickly. When environmental monitoring is weakened, communities may not know that pollution is worsening. When labor and education data disappear, policymakers lose the evidence needed to protect workers, students, teachers, and families. The reported elimination of FinCEN’s beneficial-ownership database creates another serious danger. Without reliable information about who controls American companies, law enforcement and prosecutors will have greater difficulty tracing money laundering, fraud, sanctions evasion, trafficking, and other criminal activity. Anonymous shell companies can become safer tools for cartels, corrupt officials, foreign adversaries, and financial criminals. I appreciate that members of Congress have criticized these actions and that legislation such as the Food Assurance and Security Act would protect an important USDA food-security survey. But it is time to stop merely criticizing these erasures in a piecemeal and fragmentary way, and start doing something effective. Congress should hold public hearings, compel agency explanations, protect funding for threatened data programs, require advance notice before datasets are terminated or substantially altered, preserve existing records, and enact legislation guaranteeing continued collection and public access to essential statistics. Erasing inconvenient evidence does not make problems disappear. It makes the United States less informed, less accountable, less safe, and less healthy. It is making us stupider as a nation by destroying the information we need to learn from experience and make sound decisions. Please use your authority to defend federal data systems and insist that the administration preserve the public’s access to accurate, independent information.