One of the biggest changes so far during President Donald Trump’s second term has been the steady degradation of basic data collection.

In some cases, moves have been driven by his ideological resistance to the numbers themselves; in others, by a desire to bury uncomfortable trends. And in many places, it’s simply the result of deep job and budget cuts that have left agencies unable to track the country they’re meant to govern.

Key takeaways

• The federal government is a key collector of vital data about the makeup of the country.

• President Donald Trump has long been hostile to data that contradicts his messaging and has presided over major rollbacks to data collection relating to the environment, public health, employment, demographics, and the weather.

• With less robust and accurate data, advances in science will slow down, Americans will have a murkier picture of the economy, and officials could miss important health trends. It will also further erode trust in public institutions.

Gathering basic data about the country is one of the key responsibilities of the federal government. After all, the census is mandated by the Constitution. Getting correct numbers about people, their health, the environment, and the economy is essential for taking an accurate snapshot of the country. These data are also the essential foundation for allocating resources and for sorting what works from what doesn’t.

Good numbers are a key accountability tool, and with the absence of data or lower-quality numbers driving decisions, it will be easier for leaders to mislead. Strip away the measurements and tallies, and the consequences pile up fast: Scientific research slows, early warnings about health threats get missed, economic policies become more volatile, and trust in institutions erodes even further.

Of course, good information can often have huge political consequences, which creates a strong temptation to fudge the figures.

But the Trump administration has gone far beyond its predecessors, cutting entire data-collection programs while putting ideologues in charge of fact-finding — all while pressuring agencies to support preordained conclusions. And if the White House has its way, even more rollbacks are in store.

Here are some of the most significant ways in which the White House has diminished our capacity to count and measure the country, and the world, this year:

1) Scaling back vital health surveys

Over the spring, the Trump administration laid off federal workers responsible for collecting basic information about people’s well-being and put in motion the process to overhaul federal surveys to eliminate the questions related to racial minorities and LGBTQ people.

We may not think of the federal government as one of the most important pollsters in the world, but it is: The best data we have about everything from teen smoking to increases in obesity rates to how many people have health insurance has come from the government.

Among the estimated 3,000 employees laid off from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were staffers who conduct surveys assessing everything from pregnancy risks to youth smoking to sexual violence. Without that data, the country will be flying blind when new health trends emerge. And as the administration moved to erase certain underrepresented communities from data collection, it will be harder to know whether depression or anxiety are particularly high among LGBTQ people or whether certain populations are becoming more susceptible to hypertension or diabetes.

The White House justified the cuts partly in the name of reducing government waste and partly as part of its ongoing crusade to erase any protections for and recognition of transgender or gender non-conforming people.

But that comes at a cost. The raw data that allows us to intervene and stop health problems are evaporating. —Dylan Scott, Vox senior health correspondent

2) Clawing back research grants

The National Institutes of Health, which awards upward of $40 billion in grants to scientific researchers every year, is the single biggest funder of independent scientific inquiry in the world.

But this year, the administration slashed its financial support for those research projects by an estimated $2.7 billion while

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