The nerdy, traditionally apolitical world of federal data is increasingly getting swept up in the Trump administration’s push to control every level of government.

• Across the federal government, agencies are changing how they collect and publicize information. More and more, politics and ideology are part of the equation.

Why it matters: Reliable, unbiased data informs nearly everything the federal government does — from distributing benefits and enforcing workplace discrimination laws to responding to public health threats.

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Driving the news: The administration’s moves in recent weeks span an array of agencies and types of data.

🩺 Measles. Reuters reported that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked the CDC director to remove a reference to two deaths in Pennsylvania from its online tally of measles cases.

• The move came after the CDC had already accepted Pennsylvania officials’ explanation that the deaths were linked to measles.
• Kennedy and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro had spent days sparring on social media, each accusing the other of politicizing the deaths. Kennedy is a longtime vaccine skeptic.

🏡 Census Bureau. Last month, the Commerce Department did away with language barring political interference that had been part of the department’s scientific integrity policy, NPR reported. The department oversees the Census Bureau and several other agencies.

• The move came after the bureau issued an unauthored report — promptly touted by President Trump — that found that 24,000 noncitizens voted in the 2020 election.
• The team behind the report, however, included officials with ties to the Trump-linked America First Institute.

⚠️ Anti-discrimination. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is planning to stop collecting data that’s helped the agency investigate claims of workplace discrimination, The Guardian reported.

• For 60 years, the agency has examined the demographic makeup of company workforces to enforce anti-discrimination laws.
• The EEOC is now planning to do away with the so-called EEO-1 reports, which require companies to provide data on their workforces broken down by race, ethnicity, sex and job title.
• The move comes amid a broader Trump administration crackdown on DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — initiatives.
• At a July hearing, Andrea Lucas, an EEOC commissioner appointed by Trump, said the data collection was burdensome for employers and encouraged discrimination against white workers, per the Guardian.

What they’re saying: “The level of politicization in this administration is beyond anything I’ve seen,” says Denice Ross, former U.S. chief data scientist and currently director of the Data Policy Institute at the Federation of American Scientists. “I’ve been doing this work for 25 years.”

Zoom out: Fears about the handling of data that doesn’t comport with Trump’s worldview have been around for years.

• Last year, Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics hours after the agency released disappointing jobs numbers. “Today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” Trump wrote.
• The Department of Homeland Security has stopped regularly publishing comprehensive immigration enforcement statistics, including data that allowed outsiders to assess the administration’s deportation efforts. The official who oversaw DHS’s independent statistics office resigned in July, The Atlantic reported.
• According to a tracker run by former federal government data scientists, 38 datasets have been eliminated since Trump returned to office. Hundreds of other datasets have been altered or disrupted.

The other side: “The Trump administration is committed to providing the American people with timely, accurate, and relevant data that’s helpful to inform meaningful research, discourse, and decision-making,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.

• “Ensuring public health and other critical data actually reflect reality while refusing to waste taxpayer resources on ideological pet projects are all important parts of that mission.”

The bottom line: “We really take data for granted,” Ross said. “It’s invisible infrastructure, like a bridge or cell service. We don’t notice until it’s gone.”