A quiet war on truth is unfolding as federal data on race, gender and inequality disappears—threatening the tools we need to see, understand and fix injustice.
In the first few months of Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, one thing has become crystal clear: The war on gender and racial equity is being waged in a new arena—on the battleground of data.
This fight isn’t waged with tweets or soundbites. It’s carried out through budget cuts, shuttered research programs and disappearing federal surveys. It’s a quiet but devastating assault on the tools we rely on to tell the truth—and to hold those in power accountable.
And the message is chilling: If we can’t measure inequality, maybe we can pretend it doesn’t exist.
We write this as two women leading a national research institute dedicated to truth-telling. Though our paths to this work have been different—one rooted in labor economics, the other in political science—we share a deep conviction that research is essential to policymaking. We’ve seen how data shapes legislation, and how its absence enables harm.
This is not theoretical. In 2013, during Dr. Bahn’s dissertation research, a 16-day federal government shutdown blocked access to the Beginning Teachers Longitudinal Study housed within the National Center for Education Statistics. (That agency is now effectively shuttered under the current administration’s cost-cutting agenda.) A temporary political decision stalled the release of 40 percent of the evidence base for months, forcing her to exclude it entirely from her thesis.
The challenge of keeping good teachers in jobs remains, but the data needed to understand the teacher labor shortage and address it is increasingly out of reach. And that’s just one researcher’s experience.
Now imagine what happens when entire agencies stop collecting data and multiple institutions lose access indefinitely. That’s the situation we’re seeing today.
And even as access to data disappears in real time, we’re also witnessing an unprecedented attack on the very institutions that produce the next generation of scholars and safeguard that knowledge. Federal data collection and academic research are not separate silos—they reinforce each other, working in tandem to deepen our understanding of the world and how to improve it.
Take, for example, the administration’s previous proposal to slash federal funding to Howard University by nearly 30 percent. This wasn’t just about trimming the budget—it was a direct blow to a premier historically Black college and university (HBCU), which trains more Black physicians and researchers than nearly any other institution in the country. That same proposal cut hundreds of millions from other minority-serving institutions, signaling that the schools educating scholars of color—and amplifying the needs of their communities—are dispensable.
As a proud alumna of both Hampton and Howard Universities, Dr. Taylor took those cuts personally. HBCUs don’t simply educate; they cultivate leaders who understand how policy impacts lives because it has shaped their own. These institutions produce public health experts, political scientists, economists and researchers—many now struggling to keep equity-centered projects alive under a federal administration hostile to their work.
At the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) we’re witnessing this erosion in real time. Data we rely on is vanishing from online resources at the National Center for Education Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and many others. Scholars we partner with—especially at HBCUs, tribal colleges and Hispanic-serving institutions—are losing the funding that sustains critical research on reproductive justice, wage gaps and care systems. Entire studies—designed to inform policy and practice—are being paused, scaled down or quietly canceled.
The Justice and Joy National Collaborative is one such example. Their Youth Justice & Wellbeing Initiative, which centers the lived experiences of girls and gender-expansive youth of color, recently lost vital federal support. This work doesn’t just appear in academic journals—it drives advocacy, informs legislation and protects young lives. And yet, it’s disappearing from the federal agenda. The erosion of support doesn’t just happen in isolation—it’s deeply connected to a broader effort to silence and obscure.
If our kids aren’t reflected in the research, they’re not reflected in the solutions.
When data collection stops, and advocates and researchers are silenced, policy becomes blind by design. That blindness isn’t impartial. It disproportionately harms communities already pushed to the margins. When race is stripped from maternal health reports, we overlook the crisis facing Black mothers. When LGBTQ+ identity is erased from youth surveys, we lose critical insight into mental health and safety. When disability status is omitted from labor market data, inequities in access and pay go unaddressed.
As mothers, this isn’t abstract. Our children live in a world shaped by data—where decisions about education, healthcare and civil rights hinge on what gets counted. If our kids aren’t reflected in the research, they’re not reflected in the solutions.
At IWPR, we’re working to change that. From our “Birthing While Black” research series, to our analyses on caregiving and economic inequality, we’re doubling down on research that makes injustice visible and policy actionable. For us, rigorous, community-centered data isn’t a luxury—it’s essential to democracy.
While philanthropy has stepped in to fill some gaps, private dollars are not a substitute for public investment. We need a renewed federal commitment to the research infrastructure that allows us to see and solve inequality—not ignore it.
This moment calls for more than outrage—it demands action. We need leaders who understand that erasing data erases lives. We need institutions that value truth over ideology. And we need communities ready to defend visibility for all.
Because when you cut the facts, you cut the future.
