Prairie Fire newsletter 2

If there was any doubt before, the EPA’s repeal of the “endangerment finding” makes it abundantly clear that the Trump administration sees no place for scientific consensus, or the protection of public health and safety, in its vision of America. To researchers, scientists, advocates, and anyone committed to preserving a planet hospitable to human life, I have one thing to say: We’re on our own.

But if we’re alone in the fight for progress, then at least we’re alone together, with peers that have already begun organizing.

On January 29th, Newsjunkie attended a gathering of such peers, “The Day Federal Data Went Dark,” a webinar hosted by the Association of Public Data Users and Data Index. The event featured 13 panelists representing a wide range of organizations, from data preservation initiatives, to professional statisticians’ associations, to public-interest litigators.

Each of them has spent the past year documenting and responding to attacks on public data, and outlined plans to strengthen the data preservation and resistance movement in 2026.

Here are my takeaways:

The data resistance is closing ranks. Many panelists emphasized collaboration, community-building, and outreach as a foundational strategies.

• The Public Environmental Data Partners are pioneering new tools to improve the usability of government data, including “lightweight” filters and exporters for unwieldy databases (such as the EPA’s Risk Management Plan information), designed to be easily reproduced by other organizations.

• The Movement Advancement Project is “supporting state partners” in conducting surveys to fill gaps left by the loss of federal SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) data. It’s also focusing research at the community level to gain an understanding of what drives trust in data collection.

• The National Public Health Coalition gained “a better understanding of who has been cut at CDC than HHS itself does” by crowd-sourcing data from an engaged community of ex-NIH workers.

• Lynda Kellam of the Data Rescue Project (DRP) stated, “From the beginning, we understood that meaningful data rescue requires coordination, communication, and sustainable practice… even though we have a lot of work to do, a strong community is the thread that connects all of these.” I interviewed her about DRP and the data preservation long-game back in December, which you can read here.

Along with erasure, the weaponization of data must be addressed. Litigation has helped stall abuses of federal data, but it can’t undo all the damage.

• Hannah Hickman, a litigator from Democracy Forward, spoke about DOGE and the DHS “running roughshod” over privacy protections, and how this practice has continued as the DOGE cements itself across the federal government. Democracy Forward has found success halting the IRS’s data-sharing of taxpayers’ addresses to the DHS.

• Meeta Anand, the senior director of census and data equity at The Leadership Conference Education Fund, warns that fear is already damping public participation. She anticipates a drop in decennial census responses from communities that fear their data will be used against them. For advocates, this presents a challenge: “To be disappeared in the data in today's society is to mean that your story is not told and that you are forgotten in the allocation of resources or the crafting of policies.”

We have an opportunity to improve data standards. If the Federal Statistical System (FSS) must die, let its flaws die with it.

• The American Statistical Association’s objectives include addressing the FSS’s shortcomings documented in its 2025 report, such as barriers to data-sharing, collaborative research, and communication between agencies. They plan to start with “re-imagining” the National Center for Education Statistics, “the agency most hindered by bureaucracy, red tape, and duplicative processes.”

• The Leadership Conference Education Fund is encouraging the implementation of revised race and ethnicity data standards at the state and local levels, ensuring that new and independent data collection efforts reflect the real world.

I’ll leave it here

One thing I didn’t expect to hear at a webinar for data advocates was a reference to Fred Rodgers of Mister Rodgers’ Neighborhood. But the host and vice president of the Association of Public Data Users, Beth Jarosz, gave the icon of kids’ TV a nod in her opening remarks.

“In this time of great unrest and uncertainty, I'm leaning into that old adage that we should ‘look for the helpers.’ Thirteen of them are here today.” she said.

The forces working to transform this country into an authoritarian oligarchy of the rich want you paralyzed, that’s how they win. But “helpers” of every kind have been carving paths of resistance this whole time. My intention with Prairie Fire is to find them, highlight their work, and make it easier for us to join them.

Until next time, data-dealers.

—Morgan