Notus: The Trump administration has disrupted data collection on everything from homeland security, maternal mortality, hunger, drug use, education, disaster preparation and the economy. Joy Binion worked for the federal government collecting data on emerging substance abuse trends in emergency rooms across the country. Her work was part of the Drug Abuse Warning Network, which President Donald Trump’s first administration funded at the recommendation of his commission on the opioid crisis. Six months into Trump’s second term, his administration axed the data collection effort entirely, laying off Binion and her division. “They flat out eliminated DAWN, which was actually surprising to me, because DAWN was kind of the Trump administration’s baby in 2016 as they really looked toward fighting the opioid epidemic,” Binion told NOTUS, adding that healthcare providers no longer have a comprehensive resource to learn about the new drugs that could require emergency medical responses. Since retaking office, the Trump administration has transformed how the government collects data, cut access to previously-public data and stopped collecting some data altogether. This overhaul has left significant holes in data on everything from substance use to maternal mortality. NOTUS spoke to 18 data experts and researchers who rely on federal data who said the breadth of information no longer being collected or distributed by the federal government has been nearly impossible to track. Researchers estimate that well over 3,000 data sets have been removed from public access. The current reality is that the federal government is no longer a reliable source of widespread data collection. “The status quo was, the federal government is going to collect and disseminate data and statistics,” said John Kubale, a University of Michigan professor who helps direct the world’s largest archive of social science research data, including sensitive U.S. federal government data. “That is no longer a reasonable assumption.” NOTUS verified dozens of instances of lapsed federal data to capture the range of information that is no longer being collected, has been paused or is now not available to the public. This is only a small sample of the data collection the Trump administration has made changes to…Some of these cuts were made without any public fanfare, like the administration’s decision to end DAWN. In other cases, agencies slipped the news into routine announcements. And occasionally, like when the White House mandated that questions about gender identity be removed from federal surveys, the administration touted the deletions as quelling “gender ideology extremism.” Researchers told NOTUS that the federal government’s reasoning for terminating data collection is flawed. And in some cases, the Trump administration has run afoul of congressional mandates to produce data, including by failing to publish required reports on time and removing reports required by law…”