Guardian analysis says Trump administration deleted or altered nearly 400 federal datasets, affecting health, education and air monitoring

The Trump administration has deleted or altered nearly 400 federal datasets, according to an interactive analysis published by The Guardian on August 18. The report describes the changes as part of an effort to remove or modify information that does not align with administration priorities, raising questions for researchers who rely on long-term public data for public health, education, and environmental monitoring.

The Guardian’s interactive tracking describes multiple categories of affected data. It says health datasets appear to be among the most affected. It also points to a survey used to measure violence against children and youth, describing the underlying topic as physical, sexual, and emotional violence captured through federal survey work.

The analysis further identifies environmental monitoring data as another area of concern. The report says the administration’s changes extend to real-time pollution readings collected by air quality monitors from U.S. embassies around the world, suggesting that ongoing measurements used to inform environmental awareness and research could have been modified or removed.

In addition to the specific examples, The Guardian frames the changes as part of a broader pattern affecting numerous datasets across federal agencies. The report does not, in the material provided here, specify which agency staff made the changes, the internal process used to select datasets, or whether any formal notices were published for each dataset modification or removal.

The White House or the relevant agencies were not included in the supplied material, and this story therefore does not include administration statements explaining the rationale, legal authority, or timeline for each dataset change. The Guardian’s report also characterizes the administration’s approach as an attempt to wipe findings that do not align with its priorities, but that characterization is attributed to the analysis rather than confirmed by primary government documentation in the materials available for this drafting.

If the described deletions and alterations are sustained, the practical effect could be to disrupt researchers’ ability to replicate studies, validate historical trends, or conduct comparative analysis over time. That includes work that depends on consistent data definitions and uninterrupted series for public health and education-related inquiry.

For federal agencies, the reported dataset changes also raise process questions that typically accompany large-scale information removals: whether the underlying methodology changes were clearly documented, whether users were given alternate access to replacement data, and whether the edits were made in a manner consistent with federal transparency expectations for publicly available datasets.

The Guardian’s analysis is ongoing and is presented as a tracking effort. For a definitive account of what was changed, stakeholders would likely seek agency records such as dataset version histories, public notices, and any formal documentation describing changes to data management or publication policies.