While Trump has been back in the White House for only a short time, he has already begun spreading misinformation and other harmful falsehoods. We have, of course, been through this before. Trump’s first presidency was supersaturated with lies, and, from all appearances, his second term will follow suit.
However, Trump has decided to continue waging his war on the truth from a new flank. In addition to promoting falsehoods ranging from subtle to ridiculous, he is also beginning to expunge data from government websites. The justification for these actions appears to stem from Trump’s fixation with DEI programs across the government, which he has ordered to be discontinued. Since the beginning of 2025, reporters have identified numerous government websites with data that have been deleted, including information about climate change and public health, the economy, and missing trans children, among others.
Trump’s actions in his first term supercharged projects dedicated to identifying and combating misinformation – false and misleading information that is spread unintentionally – and disinformation – false and misleading information that is spread with the intent to deceive. These projects are still very much worthwhile. However, if Trump’s first term sparked the misinformation age, his second threatens to start the missing information age: a time when information that conflicts with the agenda of those in power is simply erased.
As many journalists have noted, expunging information from government websites can result in serious harm. Missing data about climate change could make it more difficult to prepare for environmental disasters, and missing information about food safety is clearly dangerous. As noted in The Verge, deleting the names of queer and transgender children from The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children seems like nothing less than an attempt to “eradicate the recognition of trans people in the US.” The deletion of research and information around DEI initiatives not only threatens to obscure the benefits that those programs produce but also creates an ersatz version of history, written from the point of view of the intolerant. If misinformation muddies the proverbial water, missing information evaporates it. The result is a two-pronged attack on the health of the information environment.
Missing information also contributes to the creation of data voids: situations in which there is little or no high-quality information available about a subject. Data voids are potential breeding grounds for misinformation, since if the only information available about a topic is from low-quality sources, then anyone who looks for information on that topic has a much higher risk of being misled.
Of course, just as we should expect to come across some degree of misinformation in our lives – people are fallible, after all – we should not expect all information about every topic to be around forever. Records are lost, websites are discontinued or shut down, media fails to be archived, etc. Information sometimes goes missing, and that’s just a part of life.
The actions of Trump’s administration, however, are not merely the consequences of an information ecosystem where information is sometimes pruned. Intentionally deleting information from government websites is a deliberate act intended to obfuscate, silence, and censor.
The focus on misinformation that began in earnest in 2016 not only warned us of the potential consequences of false and misleading information about important issues but also suggested that consumers of information had some obligation to respond to the threats. Insofar as we are aware of factors that can easily produce harm, we ought to take steps toward mitigating or avoiding those harms, even if that just means exercising vigilance when it’s warranted. In practical terms, that might mean that we ought not to share or otherwise engage with information we’re uncertain about, or simply that we ought to be putting our trust in those who are best informed.
It’s more difficult to know how to respond to the problem of missing information. Misinformation is something that can be identified (or, at the very least, we can discuss how best to try to identify it) and mitigated by being fact-checked and corrected. While people will debate how best to do this, at its core misinformation is still something, a presence that can be detected.
Missing information, on the other hand, is an absence that is much more difficult to detect. It’s hard to know how to combat the lack of something, especially if we don’t always know what’s lacking. So what should we do when presented with a threat that doesn’t add falsehoods, but instead subtracts truths?
It might not seem like a task that should be assigned to individual consumers of information. The current problem of missing information is attributable to bad actors who are arguably abusing political power, and so part of the solution needs to come in the form of political or legal actions by those who have the power to enact them. At the same time, there are still some things that those affected by missing information can do to fight back.
For instance, some people and organizations have already begun taking action, and have worked towards making sure that archives of now-deleted documents are not themselves erased. Preserving, rehosting, and sharing information that is at risk of being deleted are thus some ways to help combat missing information.
Fortunately, when it comes to the internet, it is difficult to remove anything in its entirety. Unfortunately, those who consider the government a trusted source may not be able to find important information as easily, and with Trump’s obsession with rolling back DEI initiatives, it’s unclear what the consequences of sharing that information might be.