Two months into the Trump presidency, there's still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the new administration. One big area of concern is how the executive branch will deal with the vast amounts of data collected by the government. Federal agencies like NASA and EPA conduct countless studies crucial to understanding our impact on climate change. Labor Department surveys are vital to determining the economic health of the country. Will the administration manipulate data that contradicts its political views? Will information become a tool of oppression? Turns out there's a simpler, but potentially just as troublesome possibility: The White House could simply make it disappear.
To be clear, President Trump can not personally go out and delete decades worth of information. The census continues to exist, and if you know where to look you can peruse data about demographics and population density to your heart's content. Instead, the administration seems focused on two avenues of attack: One, make data harder to find, and two, slash funding until collecting data becomes difficult for government agencies.