What else is gone from federal websites? Troves of census data, rattling local groups.
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On Friday evening, the US Census Bureau's website was completely inaccessible for a few hours as data were scrubbed from the site. And as of Tuesday afternoon, data pages on population estimates for US counties, cities, towns, and metropolitan areas were still blocked from public view on
Those datasets are among the most important maintained by the federal government and inform both public policy and funding, as well as private business operations.
The following datasets were among the most consequential that were still inaccessible on census.gov as of Tuesday afternoon:
Estimates of
US
US
The Statistics of US Businesses
Since the deletions, users of the Census Bureau's data have scoured the internet to find other copies in case they never come back online.
The Census Bureau is not the only federal site being buffeted by content purges. Many federal agencies,
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Researchers who use the Census Bureau's menu of data on a daily basis say they were not informed that the data were going to be removed and have not been told if or when they will ever be republished.
Amid the wide-ranging shakeup, LGBTQ-related research papers and blogs were also stripped from the Census Bureau's website. A research paper that used census data to
The purge of LGBTQ+ research comes at a pivotal time for the Census Bureau, researchers say. The agency had only recently begun collecting large-scale data on LGBTQ+ populations to try and build an accurate tally and track the issues they face. A detailed tally of LGBTQ+ Americans does not yet exist, because major US national surveys were not previously asking relevant questions.
'It's a scary time, because we've spent decades trying to build a really big, robust research base, and in one fell swoop they are trying to sweep it out the door,' said Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute, a UCLA-based think tank that studies sexual orientation and gender issues. 'It's an existential question: Do facts matter?'
It's unclear if the Census Bureau will release future data on sexual orientation and gender identity, some of which has already been collected.
The entire webpage explaining the Census Bureau's planned use of data related to 'Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity' has been shut down. Census officials did not respond to written questions from the Globe asking about their future plans.
xxCensusData
Globe Staff
Globe Staff
If the wide array of currently inaccessible content continues to remain blocked in the months to come, the impacts would be immense not just for researchers, but also for private commercial groups who use census data to model their expansion efforts, said Luc Schuster, executive director of Boston Indicators.
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'Private companies use census data all the time to target growing customer bases to determine where they might want to set up a new branch of their businesses,' he said.
Boston Indicators, the research division of the Boston Foundation, also relies heavily on census data in its reports about how social, political, and demographic trends are reshaping the Commonwealth.
For decades, the Census Bureau has been viewed widely as one of the most reliable and accurate sources of information on US demographic trends. The mass removal of content since last Friday has completely upended that reputation, experts say.
'The fact that all sorts of people are using this data all of the time, and then they pulled the rug out from under businesses, researchers, and all kinds of people suggests they are okay with sowing chaos,' Schuster said. 'It risks eroding confidence in the current administration.'
Scooty Nickerson can be reached at
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