How Trump is reshaping government data

The weather data collected by certain meteorological balls have been interrupted. HIV statistics in transgender people have been cleaned on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. And basic public figures, as the number of people work for the federal government, have been frozen or delayed for months.

Through the federal government, President Donald Trump has exerted his influence on the data used by researchers, economists and scientists, an effort that took place largely behind the scenes until Friday, when he pulled the head of the work statistics office.

The agency collects and publishes economic data, and Trump accused its former chef, Erika Mcentarfer, of providing false employment data last week showing a recent slowdown in the labor market.

“The figures were faked. Biden did not manage well, he was going badly,” Trump said in an interview on CNBC on Tuesday, referring to the job numbers.

Presidents of the two political parties often seek to run government data to their advantage, cherry selection figures that put their agendas in the best possible light. But MCentarfer’s dismissal has aroused criticism of economists, Wall Street investors and even Republicans who raise broader concerns about the continuous reliability of government data once considered the Order Stone.

“We have to look for objective statistics somewhere. When people who provide statistics are dismissed, it is much more difficult to make judgments which, you know, statistics will not be politicized,” said Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., In an interview. “You can’t really make the figures different or better in dismissing people who make the count.”

William Beach, whom Trump appointed BLS commissioner in the last half of his first mandate, said in an interview with NBC News that the commissioner has no control over the results of the Jobs report, which is compiled by a group of economists and statisticians. The commissioner does not see the data as long as it is not locked in the system several days before his release, said Beach.

“It is not currently possible for the commissioner to fuck the data,” he said.

Trump has a research story to distort difficult numbers. In 2019, during his first mandate, he showed a tank hurricane model which included a black blow similar to Sharpie which pretended to be Alabama on the way to Hurricane Dorian – when it was not the case. While the Pandemic Covid-19 was raging, Trump deplored the way the tests pretended to the United States as if he had more cases than other countries.

“Think of this: if we did not do any tests, instead of testing more than 40 million people, if we were doing half of the tests, we would have half of the cases,” he told a press conference at the White House. “If we made another one, you cut this in two; We would have, once again, half of that. But the titles are always “tests”. ”

And the last days of his first mandate have been devoted to refusing to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, wrongly affirming that there had been generalized electoral fraud in his loss against the Democrat Joe Biden.

In its second mandate, administration’s efforts to target or control government data seem to increase.

After the buyouts and endowment cups, the National Weather Service stopped some of its weather outburst outings from February, a measure which, according to independent meteorologists, left data degreed that degraded the forecasts.

This spring, the National Centers for Environmental Information announced that it would no longer follow the weather of a billion dollars and climatic disasters, which it had done since 1980.

The Administration also closed the National Climate Assessment website in July after having informed hundreds of volunteer scientists who worked on his report in 2027 that he no longer needed them and had ended the funding of the American change on change program, which coordinated work on the federal report.

The White House denied any effort to control the data.

“President Trump runs the most transparent administration in history,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai. “Not only did the administration continue to share the essential data for decision -makers, businesses, researchers and everyday Americans, but we have taken historical measures to improve the reliability and precision of these data by re -examining the way they are collected and distributed.”

The White House said that the NWS had never lost confidence in the precision of weather models and that the agency plans to improve the efficiency of meteorological data and technology of new satellites to improve forecast models. The NWS continues to launch weather balloons daily, he said.

In the CNBC interview on Tuesday, Trump contradicted certain data published by his own government. He said prices dropped – despite the figures published by the BLs last week showing that inflation resumes in June. He said that a gallon of gas fell to $ 2.20; The average price for a gallon of gas is $ 3.14, slightly up since Trump came into office, but lower than it was at that time a year ago, according to data from the energy department.

Trump provided no evidence on Friday that data had been faked when he dismissed MCentarfer hours after a government report has shown that hiring had slowed down considerably, which reveals the number of jobs added in the previous two months. It is not uncommon for the agency to revise the figures down, but the revision of last week has been the most important since the start of the pandemic.

At the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reduced a collection of data due to personnel problems. The agency has twice reduced the sample collection areas across the country for the monthly inflation report, entirely suspending data collection in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Provo, in Utah. In July, he suspended data collection of around 15% in the other 72 areas. The reasoning was to “align the workload of the survey on resource levels”.

The White House assigned these changes to the recently dismissed commissioner and said that the Ministry of Labor has only learned of these changes in the press. The Ministry of Labor, which oversees BLS, worked to resolve staff and other problems affecting data collection, he said.

Economic officials in previous administrations of the two political parties have declared that improvements in government data collection are necessary due to budget cuts and drop in response rates to government surveys. But they said that there was no indication that the BLS commissioner could be involved in changing the figures for political purposes.

Stephen Moore, a former Trump campaign advisor on economic issues, agreed with Trump’s decision to replace Mcentarfer and said he hoped that a new leader could improve the accuracy of employment data. “There is no doubt that since Covid, labor figures have become more and more imprecise,” he said, citing a drop in response rates to the public survey and employers.

But he doubted that bad employment figures were politically motivated – something that Trump and his best economic advisor alleged.

“It may be true, but there is no real evidence of this,” said Moore.

The assistant commissioner of BLS, Bill Wiatrowski, who assumed the role during the Obama administration, will become the acting chief while Trump is looking for a replacement, who will have to be confirmed by the Senate.

Other types of federal data have not been updated for months. Immigration and customs application used to provide a data dashboard for arrests, detentions and deportations, but he has not updated it since December.

The White House said that the Ministry of Internal Security had regularly published information on the implementation of immigration by press release, in media appearances by senior officials and on social networks.

A set of data following the number of people work for the federal government, broken down by sex, age and average salary, has been updated every quarters for decades until January, when it freezes for months, which makes it difficult to understand how many people work in the federal government and what impact of the cuts by the Ministry of Government Effectiveness was. The first quarter data were finally published last month, four months late.

In public health agencies, the administration has deleted data, limiting data collection and sometimes issued advice that contradict their own data – affecting not only government decision -making, but also the possibility for external medical researchers, public health services and doctors to give the best advice to patients and to the public.

“The consequences of the healthy data loss point of view will be serious,” said Richard Besser, former interim director of the CDC and current president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a non -profit health foundation. “If you can’t trust the CDC website, where can people opt for this critical health information? This is the key question, and unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer. And that worries me a lot.”

The CDC rubbed a bunch of HIV content in its website in January to comply with Trump’s executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion, while continuing to publish total HIV statistics. He also temporarily retained two weekly reports on avian influenza which were to be published on January 23, although the data was finally published.

In April, Reuters said that due to the endowment reductions, the consumer product security commission would cease to collect data via the national system for monitoring electronic injury on injury to engine vehicle accidents, falls, alcohol, side effects of drugs, airplane incidents and work -related incidents.

Trump adoption of government data may depend on the way it is trendy. Several months ago, it was quick to announce labor statistics when they were more favorable.

“Excellent work numbers, much better than expected. It already works. Hang on, we cannot lose !!!” He wrote on social networks when the number of jobs added in March exceeded expectations.