What Happens When the Government Starts Reporting ‘Alternative Facts’?
The truth is the last weapon of the opposition.
THE SECOND TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, like its namesake, has set a new record for buffoonish moments: the “Gulf of America,” the Tesla showroom on the White House lawn, the Mar-a-Gaza insanity, and so many others. Some take comfort in this, reasoning that clowns are not dangerous. But surely we’ve all learned by now that beneath the clown makeup lies a hyperactive malevolence.
Much has been written about the Trump team’s assault on civil society, universities, public health, the judiciary, and our global alliances, and rightly so—but there is one danger that deserves more attention, because our ability to thwart this attempted revolution, this upending of our constitutional system, depends upon truth itself.
We have seen one institution after another buckle before Trump’s onslaught. If Congress is conquered, and Big Tech won’t oppose him, and big media is bending the knee, and big law is folding, and universities are crumpling, and the judiciary is a question mark, who is left? Only the voters. They retain the power to wrest control of Congress from the GOP in 20 months, which would slow, if not quite extinguish, Trump’s attempted revolt.
But what if the voters don’t have a grasp on reality? What if the inflation rate rises to 9 percent, bird flu is ravaging farms across the Midwest, unemployment is climbing, the economy is shrinking, measles is killing hundreds of children, crime is up—but the government has suppressed or falsified the data that would reveal those conditions?
Lies have always been the engine of MAGA, but now we face the prospect that many government statistics, on which businesses, health professionals, and our whole society depends, will be manipulated by Trumpists.
The demolition work has already begun. The Labor Department has dismissed a committee of economists, academics, and business leaders who advised the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Websites for the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Technical Advisory Committee and its Data Users Advisory Committee have been scrubbed from the agency’s website.
The Commerce Department has disbanded the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee—an arm of the Bureau of Economic Analysis—which seeks, or rather sought, to help the government provide accurate statistics on many aspects of the economy. The move came on the heels of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick telling Fox News that he plans to alter the way GDP is calculated. “You know the Commerce Department runs the statistics of GDP. Governments historically have messed with GDP. They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.”
Yes, some governments (think China) do sometimes misrepresent economic statistics. But our government has been pretty clean in this regard—until now. Keep in mind also that any first-year economics student could tell you how to break down GDP into government spending, consumption, investment, and net exports—all statistics that are, for now, easily accessible thanks to the government.
This is yet another way the Trump administration is undermining America’s global standing. As Tara Sinclair, a professor at George Washington University’s Center for Economic Research, told NPR, “If the data were manipulated, even in a small way, that will affect the credibility of our entire statistical system. And that’s going to have global financial implications, because people around the world rely on the quality of U.S. economic data to make decisions.”
The Federal Housing Finance Authority, established by Congress in 2008 to provide supervision and regulation of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Federal Home Loan banks, was also disbanded.
Advisory panels do more than offer expertise, they provide insurance against the politicization of government statistics. Without neutral outsiders looking over the shoulders of government decision makers, it becomes easier to fudge or hide data. “Disbanding them eliminates an important check on how well the government is doing its work,” explained Ronald Wasserstein of the American Statistical Association. That brings us to the Census Bureau, the agency that determines who lives where and how many votes each district is entitled to, among many other things. It just dismissed five outside advisory panels.
Farmers are suing the Department of Agriculture for removing information about climate change from its website. The programs in question were parts of the Forest Service, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and several services assisting farmers and ranchers. Simultaneously, the administration is curtailing public access to climate-change data compiled by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. You say the Earth is warming, well we have data that say the opposite. It’s “alternative facts,” but this time it’s not just Kellyanne Conway riffing with reporters—it comes bearing a government imprimatur.
It would be easier to count grains of sand on a beach than to keep track of the lies emanating from this administration, but manipulating official government studies and statistics is a step beyond anything we’ve seen and a profound threat.
Consider the secretary of health and human services, who has spent his entire career denying reality about infectious diseases, vaccines, and other matters. Nominating and confirming (looking at you, Sen. Dr. Bill Cassidy) such a dangerous crank for a key public health post was an anti-social act. Even if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. never did anything but repeat the falsehoods about vaccines that have marked his career, it was a certainty that people would look to him for guidance and be harmed. Sure enough, last week, in the midst of the measles outbreak in Texas, a number of unvaccinated people who contracted measles were admitted to hospitals with vitamin A toxicity. Kennedy has recommended vitamin A (as well as cod liver oil) as alternatives to the MMR vaccine. While vitamin A is used in the treatment of measles, it does nothing to prevent the disease, and excessive amounts of the nutrient can cause blurred vision, bone thinning, liver damage, and other problems. In pregnant women, it can lead to birth defects.
Under Kennedy, HHS is taking lying to new extremes. Though multiple studies, including one featuring half a million Danish children, have discredited the notion that there is a link between vaccines and autism, Kennedy has authorized a new study to search for a “link.” This is beyond mendacious. The original paper suggesting a connection was found to have been a hoax years ago, and again, no reputable research since has found any association between vaccines and autism. Autism diagnoses are rising due to awareness, not vaccines, as any person not suffering from oppositional defiant disorder can figure out.
Kennedy is a kook. Any well-functioning society would not permit him to serve on any advisory committee, far less the leadership of the chief public health agency in the nation. His approach is the opposite of the scientific method. He has decided on the answer and is looking for data to support his conclusion. Thus he has chosen David Geier to conduct this sham “study.” Geier is not a physician (though he was sanctioned by the state of Maryland for practicing medicine without a license), and he’s a proponent of the vaccines-cause-autism deceit. But few will remember this when he produces a government-sponsored “study” showing a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. News reports will stress that “many” experts think this is wrong, but it will be presented as a case of competing expertise, and who’s to say who is right?
The Trump administration is doing more than attempting to seize unconstitutional power for an unaccountable executive. It is seeking to destroy truth itself, the last tool of the opposition.
