It’s been a while. Years ago in 2017, I posted with concern but cautious optimism about the integrity of federal statistical data. Now in 2025, as that presidential administration returns to power, these concerns (and many others) are much sharper than ever before.
First of all, an atmosphere of “you’d better tattle on your colleagues or else you’ll get in trouble too” pervaded Communist-era 1980s Poland where I was born. That was a major reason why my parents fled to the USA with me, to raise me in a country where you could speak freely and trust your neighbors, because such snitching obviously had no place here. Now it is chilling to see that same kind of message coming directly from the top of the US executive branch:
In a new message distributed on Wednesday, government employees were warned they would face “adverse consequences” if they failed to promptly report any hidden DEI programs. […] “There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information. However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences,” the memo said. [Reuters]
Next, there are heavy-handed, unsubtle attempts to discourage hiring and retention of top talent across the government, likely leading to worse outcomes, leading to a feedback loop that “justifies” even more whittling down of talent and institutional knowledge in the name of “efficiency.”
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, whom Trump appointed to lead his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, suggested that requiring federal employees to return to the office five days a week “would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome.” [NPR]
Finally, focusing back on statistical data: There are also heavy-handed, unsubtle attempts to discourage participation in the decennial Census, likely leading to poorer data quality, leading to further erosion of trust in shared facts. We can’t even collect good data to begin with if we lose the public’s trust; so even if the Census changes are ultimately blocked, the fact that this has come up at all means that harm is already underway. (And if the administration’s changes do go through, they may reap further partisan advantages from changes to apportionment for the House of Representatives as well as future redistricting.)
Among the dozens of Biden-era executive orders that President Trump revoked on Monday was one that had reversed the first Trump administration’s unprecedented policy of altering a key set of census results. […] Biden’s now-revoked 2021 order affirmed the longstanding practice of including the total number of persons residing in each state in those census results. It was issued in response to Trump’s attempt during the national tally in 2020 to exclude millions of U.S. residents without legal status. [NPR]
Including a citizenship question, Passel adds, “introduces another source of potential error into the census, and it undermines public confidence in the data as well.” [NPR]
I admit the US federal statistical system wasn’t perfect by any means before this…
In recent months, budget shortfalls and the restrictions of short-term funding have led to the end of some datasets by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, known for its tracking of the gross domestic product, and to proposals by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to reduce the number of participants surveyed to produce the monthly jobs report. […] Potok says she’s currently working on an update to an American Statistical Association report released last year [in July of 2024] to sound the alarm on the risks facing the country’s data. That report concluded that the main threats to the statistical agencies include declining public participation in surveys, not enough laws to help protect the data’s integrity from political interference and neglect from congressional appropriators. [NPR]
…but at the moment, I see little reason for optimism that these threats will soon be taken seriously and addressed with integrity, given that the current president already has a history of manipulating government data and exerting political influence over scientific agencies.
PS — Nowadays Poland is doing leagues better today than when we left in the 1980s. But even there, we still have concerns about the independence of statistical agencies from political manipulation:
The International Statistical Institute (ISI) and the American Statistical Association (ASA) have raised concerns regarding the recent dismissal of Dominik Rozkrut as President of Statistics Poland (Główny Urząd Statystyczny – GUS). In a joint letter addressed to Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the organisations emphasised the vital role of professional independence in maintaining the credibility and trustworthiness of official statistics. The letter, dated 26 December 2024, highlights the importance of statistical institutions as cornerstones of evidence-based decision-making in democratic societies. The ISI and ASA warned that any threats to the independence of statistical leaders could erode public trust and undermine the integrity of official data. [ISI]