Some data collection was already at risk before Trump reclaimed the White House, largely because of shrinking budgets and staff departures. Government number crunchers have also had to contend with fewer people responding to surveys, rendering efforts to assemble representative datasets more costly and time-consuming—a problem that extends beyond the US. “It’s kind of like turning off a water tap. You get less and less, and we don’t know where it’s going to stop,” says Nancy Potok, who served as US chief statistician in the first Trump administration. “We’re down to a lesser stream of data.”