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# Trump is torching federal data. Black mothers will pay first.
- URL: https://www.workersrights.news/trump-torching-federal-data-library-of-alexandria-opinion/
- Published: 2026-10-28T19:56:17.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-28T19:56:17.000Z
- Description: The CDC survey built to explain why Black women die in childbirth lost its entire staff. It's one of a dozen datasets in the graveyard.
- Author: WorkersRights.News Team
- Tags: Advice & Opinion, Politics

Historians mostly agree the Library of Alexandria didn't go up in one glorious fire. It died slowly. Rulers stopped paying the scholars, purged the ones they didn't like, and let the collection rot on the shelves. No single villain with a torch. Just a long line of people in power deciding knowledge wasn't worth the upkeep.

We're watching the American version in real time, and the Trump administration is holding the matches.

Last Halloween, the Federation of American Scientists and its partners at EssentialData.US opened a graveyard for federal datasets that have been killed or gutted since Trump returned to office. This year's carousel adds fresh graves, complete with tombstones and birth and death dates. It's a clever bit. It's also an obituary page for the tools this country uses to see what's happening to working people.

These datasets didn't die of natural causes. Most of the losses trace back to 2025, when Elon Musk's DOGE canceled research contracts, agencies shed staff by the hundreds, and Trump's executive order on "DEI" turned questions about race and gender into a liability. A Republican Congress has mostly watched. Here's who's in the ground, and who gets hurt.

## The pregnancy survey that showed who was dying

Start with the one that should make you angriest.

Since 1987, the CDC's Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, or PRAMS, has asked new mothers what happened before, during, and after they gave birth. It runs in 50 sites and covers about 81% of U.S. live births. It's the only national survey built around pregnancy and the months after it.

In early 2025, the CDC paused data collection to comply with Trump's executive orders. Talking Points Memo reported the survey ran afoul of the DEI order because it asked about race, sexual orientation, gender identity and income. Then on April 1, 2025, the entire CDC team that ran PRAMS got layoff notices. The CDC also asked the White House budget office to strip a question and change answer options to comply with Trump's executive order on "gender ideology." LGBTQ parents, edited off the form.

Here's why this lands hardest on marginalized families: PRAMS was built to find the gaps. Black women died around childbirth at nearly 3.5 times the rate of white women in 2023, according to federal data. CDC researchers have found pregnancy-related death rates for Black and American Indian and Alaska Native women far above those for white women, and the gap held at every education level. A Black woman with a college degree faced a higher risk than a white woman who never finished high school.

A survey like PRAMS is how public health figures out why. Was it the hospital, the insurance, the bus ride to a prenatal visit that never came, postpartum depression nobody screened for? Take the survey away and the disparity doesn't disappear. It just stops being anyone's job to explain it.

Mississippi shows what that looks like on the ground. In September 2025, the Guardian reported the state had stopped collecting PRAMS data, even as it declared an emergency over infant deaths. A CDC staffer said in a court declaration that the agency likely can't produce accurate national maternal and infant health data for 2024, 2025 and 2026.

To be precise, PRAMS still exists on paper. The CDC asked the budget office this year for three more years of authority to run it. But a survey is people, and the people were fired. A form with nobody left to run it is a tombstone with nice paperwork.

## The kids

In February 2025, DOGE announced the Education Department had canceled 89 research contracts worth nearly $900 million. Research groups put the real number closer to 170\. By the American Statistical Association's count, more than a third of the National Center for Education Statistics' data products were abandoned in 2025\. The casualties include:

- **The National Teacher and Principal Survey (1987–2025).** America's only nationally representative survey of teachers and principals, and one of the main ways we tracked who quits teaching and why. We have a teacher shortage, and we stopped counting the teachers walking out the door.
- **U.S. participation in PIRLS (2001–2025).** The United States took part in every round of this international fourth-grade reading assessment since it began. Education researchers warned the contract cuts would knock the country out of international assessments. Now we can't compare our kids' reading to the rest of the world's. Convenient, if you'd rather not know.
- **Indicators of School Crime and Safety (1998–2025).** Published every year since 1998, covering bullying, weapons and violence at school. The 2024 edition was pulled from the publication schedule in 2025\. Every parent who's ever sent a kid to school after a shooting has a stake in this one.
- **National Household Education Surveys.** Tracked how families handle homeschooling and childcare. Who keeps an eye on the youngest kids now? Apparently nobody.

## Your wallet

In August 2026, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau stopped publishing the written complaint stories in its Consumer Complaint Database, along with the charts built from them. At the time, the database held 3.8 million complaints with narratives. Bloomberg Law called it a change "long sought by industry." Those stories were how you checked out a debt collector or a lender before handing them a dollar. The old narratives now sit in the CFPB's FOIA reading room as bulk monthly files. Technically public, in the format least likely to be read. Banks didn't even have to ask twice.

The USDA's mink survey (1971–2025) died in the same August 2025 notice as something closer to home for workers: the Agricultural Labor Survey, which measured farm wages nationally for decades. USDA says Labor Department data now covers it. FAS warns the mink data mattered for a different reason: without industry tracking, a mutating bird flu has a blind spot to hide in.

The Energy Information Administration lost more than 100 of its roughly 350 employees in the DOGE-era cuts, according to Bloomberg. It shelved its International Energy Outlook, published since 1985, after losing key staff. It also moved to kill its solar module shipments report, which pv magazine estimated cost about $44,000 a year to run. Even the Solar Energy Manufacturers for America objected, arguing the data tracks the onshoring of solar factory jobs, which it called a critical part of Trump's own manufacturing agenda. When the industry is begging you to keep counting its jobs, you've lost the plot.

## The planet and the border

- **Embassy air quality monitoring (2008–2025).** U.S. embassies and consulates in more than 80 countries posted real-time pollution readings. In Beijing, that data contradicted the official numbers and helped push China to clean up its air. The State Department pulled the plug in March 2025, citing budget constraints. The savings? Tens of thousands of dollars.
- **USAID's Demographic and Health Surveys (1984–2025).** Four decades of data on mothers and newborns in more than 90 countries. The U.S. terminated the program on Feb. 24, 2025, cutting off 23 surveys already set up or underway.
- **NOAA's Research and Development Database (2010–2025).** A map of the agency's ocean and storm science, gone. Its cousin, the billion-dollar weather disaster database, was retired the same year.
- **DHS Immigration Enforcement and Legal Processes Monthly Tables (2023–2025).** Monthly counts of arrests, detention and removals. The last release covered January 2025\. So during the biggest deportation push in memory, the government stopped publishing the monthly scorecard. When ICE and DHS make claims about who they're arresting, those claims are now about all we get.

## The government's side

Agencies have offered reasons. The CFPB says the complaint stories were unverified, one-sided and unfair to companies. The EIA says the solar report's value no longer outweighed the burden of collecting it. USDA says no law required the mink survey. The State Department cited its budget, and NOAA cited "evolving priorities" and staffing changes.

Some of those points deserve a hearing. Complaints are one side of a story, and every survey costs money. But a $44,000 report and an air monitor that already exists don't break a federal budget measured in trillions. And when the cut lands on the data that measures racial gaps in who dies giving birth, "efficiency" starts to sound like a cover story.

## The people holding the buckets

Here's the good news. Alexandria didn't have volunteers with hard drives. We do.

The Federation of American Scientists launched a Data Policy Institute to track these losses. EssentialData.US keeps the graveyard so nobody can pretend it didn't happen. Public Environmental Data Partners brought back the EPA's environmental justice mapping tool. Climate Central hired the NOAA scientist behind the billion-dollar disaster database to rebuild it. Volunteers have been copying federal files into archives like DataLumos at the University of Michigan, including teacher survey tables and PRAMS data. Researchers around the world are organizing to keep the Demographic and Health Surveys alive. And inside the agencies, career statisticians who survived the cuts are still showing up to do the work.

These folks are carrying the scrolls out of the building. The least the rest of us can do is help: share their work, cite their archives, and ask your members of Congress one plain question. Who decided our kids, our moms, and our paychecks weren't worth counting?

## Sources

- [Federation of American Scientists: In Remembrance of Dearly Departed Federal Datasets](https://fas.org/publication/deleted-federal-datasets?ref=workersrights.news)
- [CDC via Federal Register: PRAMS information collection notice (Nov. 21, 2025)](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-11-21/pdf/2025-20583.pdf?ref=workersrights.news)
- [Talking Points Memo: Why PRAMS Got Shuttered](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-prams-got-shuttered?ref=workersrights.news)
- [STAT: CDC lays off PRAMS staff](https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/01/prams-maternal-mortality-cdc-layoffs/?ref=workersrights.news)
- [CDC change request to comply with Executive Order 14168 (via OMB.report)](https://omb.report/icr/202504-0920-014/doc/156698801.pdf?ref=workersrights.news)
- [Sen. Booker and Rep. Kelly letter on PRAMS](https://www.booker.senate.gov/news/press/booker-kelly-request-answers-from-hhs-secretary-regarding-shutdown-of-vital-maternal-health-data-system?ref=workersrights.news)
- [Harvard Chan School: Maternal and infant health at risk in Mississippi after cuts at critical CDC program](https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/maternal-and-infant-health-at-risk-in-mississippi-after-cuts-at-critical-cdc-program?ref=workersrights.news)
- [Fortune: Black women's maternal mortality rate, 2023 federal data](https://fortune.com/well/article/black-women-maternal-mortality-rate-increase/?ref=workersrights.news)
- [CDC MMWR via PubMed Central: Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Pregnancy-Related Deaths](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6730892?ref=workersrights.news)
- [Inside Higher Ed: Trump administration cancels IES contracts](https://www.insidehighered.com/index%2Ephp/node/174181?ref=workersrights.news)
- [AERA and COPAFS statement on NCES contract terminations](https://www.aera.net/tabid/21866/mid/54817/default.aspx?ref=workersrights.news)
- [NCES: PIRLS overview](https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pirls/overview.asp?ref=workersrights.news)
- [Federal Data Forum (ASA): Indicators of School Crime and Safety pulled from schedule](https://federaldataforum.prb.org/discussion/latest-updates-on-education-data-from-asa?ref=workersrights.news)
- [Consumer Finance Monitor: CFPB Ends Publication of Consumer Complaint Narratives](https://www.consumerfinancemonitor.com/2026/08/18/cfpb-ends-publication-of-consumer-complaint-narratives-and-data-visualizations/?ref=workersrights.news)
- [Mondaq: Consumer Complaint Narratives No Longer Included in CFPB Database](https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/consumer-law/1834322/consumer-complaint-narratives-controversial-from-the-start-no-longer-included-in-cfpb-database?ref=workersrights.news)
- [USDA NASS: Federal Register notice discontinuing the Mink and Agricultural Labor Surveys](https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-16831.pdf?ref=workersrights.news)
- [Bloomberg: Key US Energy Data Delayed or Suspended After DOGE Cuts](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-28/key-us-energy-data-delayed-or-suspended-as-doge-staff-cuts-bite?ref=workersrights.news)
- [pv magazine USA: EIA says solar module report no longer worth it](https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/09/08/eia-says-solar-module-report-no-longer-worth-it/?ref=workersrights.news)
- [SEMA Coalition comments on discontinuing Form EIA-63B (via OMB.report)](https://omb.report/icr/202603-1905-001/doc/original/167382700.pdf?ref=workersrights.news)
- [Argus: EIA delays some reports after staffing cuts](https://www.argusmedia.com/news-and-insights/latest-market-news/2726093-eia-delays-some-reports-after-staffing-cuts-correction?ref=workersrights.news)
- [Environmental Health News: U.S. stops global air quality monitoring at embassies](https://www.ehn.org/u-s-stops-global-air-quality-monitoring-at-embassies?ref=workersrights.news)
- [IQAir: Defunding U.S. Embassy air quality monitoring](https://shop-ca.iqair.com/blogs/news/defunding-us-embassy-air-quality-monitoring-and-its-global-consequences?ref=workersrights.news)
- [PRB: Collaborating for Action on the Future of Demographic and Health Surveys](https://www.prb.org/resource/collaborating-for-action-on-the-future-of-demographic-and-health-surveys-meeting-report/?ref=workersrights.news)
- [NBC News: Senate Democrats want to revive NOAA's billion-dollar disaster database](https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/senate-democrats-want-revive-noaa-database-tracked-billion-dollar-natu-rcna231456?ref=workersrights.news)
- [Deportation Data Project: agency report repository](https://deportationdata.org/data/reports.html?ref=workersrights.news)
- [DataLumos: National Teacher and Principal Survey tables archive](https://www.datalumos.org/datalumos/project/234604/version/V1/view?ref=workersrights.news)