Under the direction of President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and his DOGE crew have reinvented "truth" and done irreparable damage by deleting reams of digital data, according to a new opinion piece in The Washington Post.
Taxpayer-funded information on subjects like climate change, sexual orientation and gender, crime, and health have all been wiped from government websites, according to writers Amanda Shendruk and Catherine Rampell.
"We don’t know the full universe of statistics that has gone missing, but the U.S. DOGE Service’s wrecking ball has already left behind a wasteland of 404 pages," they wrote.
The reason behind the "digital book-burning" is because much of the information includes evidence that could thwart Trump's agenda, according to the article. Trump eliminates the "inconvenient truths" and can curate a new reality that blends seamlessly with his agenda.
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"Spinning facts" is straight out of the politician playbook, "But Trump’s statistical purges have been faster and more sweeping — picking off not just select factoids but entire troves of public information," they wrote. "Obstructing access to such facts makes it more challenging for experts and regular voters alike to assess how politicians are serving the public."
In addition to deleting data and blocking new data collection, the article lists examples of how the administration misrepresented or altered data that's already been gathered. Without this vital information, Americans may be well unprepared for a bird flu pandemic, for example.
"Some of this censorship has been challenged (and at least temporarily reversed) through litigation," they wrote. But other bits of vital information "will never see the light of day, even if a new administration changes course," leading to only one conclusion: "Americans might be stuck with whatever Trump chooses to share with us, or not."