Donald Trump has taken aggressive steps to control government data that conflicts with his political agenda. Since taking office in January, his administration has removed or altered hundreds of federal datasets, fired statistical agency leaders, and halted crucial data collection programs across multiple government departments.
The most visible example came in August when Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer hours after her agency released a jobs report showing weaker employment growth than initially reported. Without evidence, Trump called the data ‘rigged’ and implied that McEntarfer manipulated the numbers ‘for political purposes,‘ showing his pattern of blaming statistics when they don’t support his narrative.
