Topic: Federal Data

The Trump administration shut down the primary website for the National Climate Assessment, a series of reports mandated by Congress since the 1990s. Scientists, including Catherine Hayhoe, criticized the move as a "modern version of book burning" that leaves local planners without essential data. NASA officials stated that existing reports would eventually be hosted as PDFs on a different platform.

Senator Mark Warner and other members of the Senate Intelligence Committee have raised security concerns regarding DOGE staff access to sensitive government systems. Warner warned that "DOGE Bros"—young tech professionals without government vetting—could inadvertently compromise federal agents or payment systems. Labor unions have already filed lawsuits following reports of unauthorized modifications to government databases.

The Federal Register published a notice from the Pretrial Services Agency for the District of Columbia regarding the creation of a "System of Records" for employee religious exception requests. This system will maintain personal religious information for those seeking exemptions from vaccine mandates. The hosts describe this as a "communist" style of keeping tabs on citizens' beliefs.

The September 2017 jobs report showed the U.S. economy losing 33,000 jobs, which the government attributed to hurricane impacts. The hosts discuss the significance of the number 33 in news reporting and point out contradictions between the labor participation rate and the falling unemployment percentage.

AC Thompson identified three major trends in ProPublica's data: a surge in anti-Semitism, a "rash" of anti-immigrant sentiment, and incidents where perpetrators invoke President Trump's name. The project tracks lower-level harassment that does not meet the federal legal definition of a hate crime. The hosts discuss the expansion of the "hate crime" category to include non-criminal behavior and speech.

Volunteers at New York University held a "Data Rescue" event to archive federal environmental data they fear may be deleted by the Trump administration. Critics argue that government data is rarely lost in this manner and call for more focus on peer-reviewed science over consensus.

Vivek Kundra promotes a public-facing IT dashboard designed to lift the veil on federal technology expenditures. Critics argue the dashboard merely converts existing, non-transparent data into decorative pie charts without providing substantive new information. Many projects on the dashboard reportedly show zero dollars in spending due to incomplete data reporting.

Financial institutions and companies like Federal Express use sophisticated data mining to profile consumer behavior and detect suspicious patterns. The US government is reportedly seeking access to all credit card transaction data to monitor political affiliations and spending habits. Specific purchase patterns, such as buying gas and Nikes in quick succession, can trigger automatic account freezes.