When asked last September about the removal of climate-related signs and webpages from Acadia National Park, Deputy Press Secretary Aubrie Spady offered this explanation: the content came down because the administration “believes in only administering facts based on real science to the American public, not brainless fear-mongering rhetoric used to steal taxpayer dollars.” The incident is small but telling — a window into the Trump administration’s systematic assault on public knowledge.
Since returning to office, the administration has threatened lawsuits against legacy media, withheld broadcast licenses, defunded public broadcasting, cut grants to universities and research institutions, dismissed nonpartisan experts from advisory bodies like the National Science Board, and used press briefings to fabricate and distort government data. Most consequentially, it has eliminated entire federal research programs — including EPA’s Office of Research and Development — and scrubbed inconvenient information from government websites.
This campaign exploits real vulnerabilities. A complicit Republican Congress has allowed the administration to defund Congressionally-authorized data programs. Courts have been overwhelmed by the volume of executive orders; much damage is done before legal challenges can reverse it. Meanwhile, Americans increasingly get their news from partisan social media ecosystems, legacy media consolidates under conservative billionaires, and AI makes it ever harder to distinguish fact from fabrication.
The practical stakes are high. Federal data feeds the weather models that protect public safety and drive daily decisions across agriculture, insurance, aviation, and utilities. After NOAA shuttered its Billion Dollar Climate and Weather Disaster database, private data vendors rushed to fill the void — at a price. The insurance industry, facing higher costs for private data and growing underestimation of risk, has taken notice. Environmental regulatory processes require accurate baseline data. Farmers depend on federal weather systems. When the government stops collecting and sharing data, real economic and safety costs follow.
The purge of climate science has been sweeping. Climate.gov no longer references human-caused climate change. The National Climate Assessments have been removed from government websites. The National Center for Atmospheric Research is slated for complete dismantling. Over 3,000 federal datasets have been removed or altered beyond recognition. Mass firings have compounded the damage: according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the federal government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.’s since Trump took office — the human infrastructure required to collect, interpret, and model data.
The deeper danger is epistemological. Without historical records, climate-related disasters, the spread of pest and disease vectors, and climate-driven migration appear inexplicable rather than the consequences of deliberate policy choices. Erasing the past makes it easier to control the present.
Resistance is underway on several fronts. Scientific societies are stepping up: the American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society have launched a joint initiative, the U.S. Climate Collection, to sustain research and assessment. Climate Central, a nonprofit of just 50 people, has restored the NOAA Billion Dollar Disaster dataset — often by rehiring the same scientists the administration just laid off — while carefully prioritizing which other projects can be preserved. These efforts are admirable, but they cannot substitute indefinitely for the scale and continuity of federal investment.
Researchers are also fighting back in public and in court. Scientists have challenged flawed administration reports through peer review and Congressional testimony. The National Security Archive’s Climate Change Transparency Project maintains a running chronology of suppressed and altered federal data — an indispensable record of what has been lost. Organizations including PEER, Public Citizen, and the Environmental Defense Fund are pursuing lawsuits, FOIA requests, and administrative challenges; in some cases, finding unexpected allies in the agricultural and insurance sectors that depend on federal data. Notably, a federal court recently ordered the government to restore deleted climate datasets following litigation by farmers.
Information is a public good, which is why government has long been entrusted with its collection and dissemination. That pipeline is now badly damaged. Rebuilding it will require sustained legal, political, and institutional pressure — supporting the nonprofits and journalists documenting what is being lost, backing litigation to restore public data, and insisting that elected representatives fund the scientific infrastructure their constituents depend on.
It will also require each of us to become more careful consumers of information: to seek primary sources, verify claims independently, and bring healthy skepticism to official pronouncements. The administration is counting on our credulity. We shouldn’t oblige.
Keith Kozloff is an environmental economist previously with the federal government.