There is nothing new about presidential administrations taking actions that bury important public information. The newest example from Donald Trump’s chosen people, according to a Wall Street Journal report, is the elimination of data on how many people in this country have difficulty getting enough food. The given reason is that the report “became overly politicized,” in the words of a USDA spokesperson.
Nothing New About Hiding
Obfuscation has been common among administrations.
Some are shocking in their breadth, like the Pentagon Papers that ripped open the bloody dark farce of the Vietnam War. Watergate. The brutally manipulative and false claim of weapons of mass destruction that led to eight years of war, involvement, and thousands of Americans dead, tens of thousands wounded, in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
Some of the hiding may seem smaller in context, but they aren’t. Frequently, the small sweepings have large impacts. For years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics had the Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program, which reported on mass layoff actions by corporations. The data helped identify patterns that affect the labor market and the economy. However, in 2013, because of cuts required by the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act, President Obama ordered across-the-board spending cuts (also called sequestration), which included ending the MLS program as well as others. Perhaps something else could have been cut, maybe not. It doesn’t matter because, in either case, the information was lost and unlikely to ever return.
Administrations have used security classifications or their equivalents since George Washington. Sometimes the actions seem justified. Other times, as in the case of Edward Snowden, secrecy was a way to prevent people from knowing about covert activities like massive surveillance of the public.
You Can’t Complain About What You Can’t Monitor
Making data unavailable by not collecting it is a more subtle form of hiding information. Not all lack of collection by the government has a suspicious side. Data accumulation, management, and presentation cost money. The amount of information any government collects can be dizzyingly deep.
However, when any organization changes the amounts and types of available data, there is a good reason to ask why. (An aside for investors: When a company does this, pay attention because there may be something it wants to distract from.)
In this case, the Trump administration has cancelled an annual survey that, since the mid-1990s, has given insight every December into how people in the country managed if they couldn’t get enough food, with measurements by state and demographic group. As the Journal notes, federal, state, and local officials have used the data to direct and evaluate assistance programs.
Over the weekend, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that it would cancel the survey. “This nonstatutory report became overly politicized and upon subsequent review, was unnecessary to carry out the work of the Department,” said USDA spokesman Alec Varsamis, according to the Journal.
The use of the term “nonstatutory” is misleading as almost all of the reports provided by the government are nonstatutory — that is, they aren’t specifically required by congressoinal action.
“Not having this measure for 2025 is particularly troubling given the current rise in inflation and deterioration of labor market conditions, two conditions known to increase food insecurity,” said Syracuse University Professor Colleen Heflin, who has studied the data since the survey began, the Journal reported.