Who's behind the news?
Who's behind the news?
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Newsjunkie.net is a resource guide for journalists. We show who's behind the news, and provide tools to help navigate the modern business of information.
Use of Data
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1.5.2
Government-funded science is meant to serve the public interest, but it has been turned into a tool for maintaining power. The Trump administration has disrupted progress in medicine and health by terminating thousands of NIH grants, while promoting MAHA influencers and Trump’s own Rx program. It has erased victims and resisters of state oppression from history, while scapegoating minority groups. It’s revoked EPA protections and transparency mandates, giving corporations free rein to profit from pollution.
So… Now what?
The first step is don’t accept defeat. The moment you give up on your rights to knowledge, to opportunity, to a government that supports and protects its citizens, is the moment they win. The only power authoritarians have is what we let them take. They manufacture threats to falsely create an urgency for a grant of stronger power. Yet—every person who refuses to go along weakens their power.
Which leads to the second step: Resist.
Prairie Fire is dedicated to resistance. We’ve spent the past months covering individuals and organizations working to preserve public knowledge. Some, like the National Public Health Coalition, speak at rallies and to members of Congress. Others, like software engineer Ari Lamstein (more on him later), build open-source data tools to improve accessibility for the whole movement.
Throughout our exploration of the research-recovery movement, we’ve collected the tools, guides, and methodologies offered by these leading figures. Today, I’d like to introduce you to the Prairie Fire Resource Page—home to our ever-expanding collection of tools and best practices. Whether you’re an independent journalist or an orphaned group of federal scientific advisors, we hope you’ll be able to find a resource to help you join the fight.
Here’s where to start:
Trackers and dashboards monitoring Trump's impact on public data, the environment, global health, and more
Confirmed Data Terminations and Removals - from America’s Essential Data, my go-to resource for a refresh on the Trump administration’s most egregious data cuts
Data Checkup - Data Index monitors the data quality and availability risk-levels of 16 federal collections, with plans to add 52 more
Collections of preserved government data and resources, plus re-created data tools
Data Rescue Portal - the largest available collection of "rescued" federal data, maintained and aggregated by the Data Rescue Project
Guide to Environmental Data Mapping Tools - hosts links to re-created EPA, FEMA, and CEQ data-mapping tools, from the Public Environmental Data Partners
Tools, guides, and strategies for safeguarding datasets, documenting changes, and continuing independent research
Data Rescue Resources - the Data Rescue Project’s guides and tools for preserving government datasets
FOIA filer - submit and track a FOIA request through MuckRock’s submission form, you can submit up to four requests for $20, or view (and copy) successful requests for free
Toolkit: Running an Independent Science Advisory Committee - the Union of Concerned Scientists’ guide for continuing or forming a federal SAC, could also apply to independent groups of scientists looking to form a body to advise nonprofits or other organizations
Independent data and research that combats MAGA suppression
Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science - PANGAEA, hosts thousands of earth and environmental science datasets
Deportation Data Project - FOIA-requested and public ICE data, including arrests, detentions, deportations, and daily populations
Map the Meal Gap - Feed America’s estimates of food insecurity by state and county
Dirty Air, Dirty Deeds - Map of Clean Air Act exempt facilities with estimated pollutant and health risk levels, from the Union of Concerned Scientists
See also: our Reporting & Communications, Funding, and Legal resources.
The Resource Pages will be updated as we continue to explore the field. Newsjunkie writer Curtis Whiting has also created a guide to digital repositories, for those looking to start their own Data Safehouse. If you know of a tool not shown here, please send a shoutout to morgan@newsjunkie.net.
By the American Statistical Association’s count, 36.6% of the data products developed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to observe the demographics, efficacy, and safety of our nation’s schools, have been abandoned since 2025. The American Statistical Association’s NCES Study and Project Tracker (also featured on our Watch Tower page) shows that, out of 71 monitored data collections, projects, and programs offered by the statistical agency, 26 are “inactive.”
Read the full Prairie Fire article here.
Ari Lamstein, an independent data science engineer and technical trainer, created an open-source software package that pulls immigrant population stats from Census data.
From Lamstein’s blog: “President Trump has made reducing illegal immigration and increasing deportations central goals of his second administration (1, 2). This is causing many people to ask: how are these policies changing the country’s population?
“To help answer that, I built a new open-source Python package called acs-nativity. It provides a simple interface for accessing and visualizing data on the size of the native-born and foreign-born populations. The data comes from American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates and is available from 2005 onward.”
I’m not saying fighting an authoritarian regime is easy, or comfortable. It’s hard, sometimes dangerous work. But it can and will get worse if we’re complacent. And while fighting is hard, living in a country where public education, health, and science are controlled by misanthropic billionaires would be a whole lot worse.
Let’s do something about it.
Until next time, data-dealers.
—Morgan
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