Killing the Messenger: How the Government is Destroying Data and Disrupting Lives
George Orwell, “1984”
With Elon Musk now a glaring exception, there are powerful business leaders celebrating Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.” While they toast Trump’s pro-business and anti-regulatory posture now, that celebration may come crashing down sooner than we realize.
I’ve preached for some time about the power of narrative—our need to tell engaging stories to effectively reach people. But facts do matter, and they’re under attack.
The assault on scientific research and universities is just one ripple in the tsunami that seeks to obliterate fact-based thinking and policy. As a follow-on to DOGE attacking organizations across the government and across the country, it’s as if George Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” has come alive and been charged with the task of undermining our access to the truth.
But until it directly impacts their market—and it will—many business leaders are failing to see how the destruction of data collection affects them.
The list of examples is long and growing:
Maybe the manipulation of national security intelligence reporting feels irrelevant to business.
Maybe the end of a five-decade effort to track substance abuse and mental health—via the National Survey on Drug Use and Health—seems too far removed from trade.
Maybe the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System doesn’t feel connected to your work.
Maybe the Environmental Justice surveys sound too distant from your day-to-day.
And maybe the revocation of Statistical Policy Directive #15—defining race and ethnicity in government research—seems buried in bureaucratic weeds.
We need to draw the connections more clearly.
At first glance, the suspension of weather balloon launches across several states might seem inconsequential to the average person.
But pause for a moment: Aren't spring and summer peak seasons for planting and harvesting in much of the country?
Farmers sure care about the weather and need that information in advance to know if they need to harvest a little early or wait another week. If you pay for food, then that should matter to you—and everyone else.
We are losing so much vital information each and every day under this administration.
The Small Business Administration has cut way back on tracking the financial health of small businesses.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is reducing the sample size for its monthly reporting on employment.
The Census Bureau’s Household Trends and Outlook Pulse Survey has been delayed and postponed for months, effectively closing this important window into the American economy.
While this administration looks to redirect Harvard’s research funding toward trade schools, we're forced to rely on a Department of Education data stream—originally intended to monitor community health—that now makes selecting project sites feel like a shot in the dark.
Unless, of course, those sites are chosen solely for political gain.
And that’s how decisions are being made now—fact-based public policy has been replaced by the politics of personal revenge and self aggrandizement.
If the Consumer Price Index returns politically unfavorable inflation numbers, then what? Do we really think that it is so important that it is untouchable?
Before applauding the blackout that will result from the Treasury’s cancellation of the Corporate Transparency Act, remember that it was created to stop tax fraud, money laundering, and terrorist financing.
Dictators hate facts. Facts make trouble for them by diluting the power of propaganda. Facts are assets for people with opposing views.
As important as narrative is—and I’m not at all backing away from that emphasis—facts serve as bookends for what’s considered reasonable debate. Outside of those boundaries, people are traditionally dismissed or ignored. But when those guardrails are thrown to the wind, the unreasonable becomes acceptable.
We should all think very carefully, right now, about what the attack on facts means for us—both as individuals and as leaders of organizations. We’ll see a data set adjusted here, a data set get dismissed there, and before we know it, the data set that really matters to us gets blacked out altogether.
The Trump administration is actively scrubbing, distorting, and dismissing critical data, from food safety and infrastructure to economic transparency and public health. Without some guardrails how do we govern, plan, budget, or forecast? Without a compass, how do we even know where we are—much less where we are heading?
