The Trump administration’s dismantling of the federal government’s role in society continues to show up across policy and practice. Some of the most immediate and significant impacts fall on people with disabilities – in addition, women, and those who are disproportionately impacted in Black and brown communities. Policymakers rely on detailed data – to track disparities over time and target resources effectively. Analyses have shown that eliminating or limiting data on specific populations can distort findings and undercut policy responses, making it harder to address gaps in outcomes.
Impacts shown in topline data can hide important differences between disabled and nondisabled people. Overall employment rates for people with disabilities show a longstanding gap compared to nondisabled workers. Those overall figures do not capture the various impacts and outcomes of policies on the disability community. Disaggregated data – broken down by gender, race and more – shows that employment rates differ significantly by race and gender, with disabled women of color facing some of the lowest levels of labor force participation. Without that level of detail, policymakers cannot fully understand where barriers are most pronounced or how to target responses to those barriers.
What the federal government chooses to measure directly shapes policymaking, particularly for communities that have historically been overlooked in data collection and research, including people with disabilities. These choices influence which disparities policymakers identify, where resources are directed, and whose experiences remain visible in federal data. For example, changes to how disability is measured across federal surveys can affect everything from workforce participation estimates to assessments of healthcare access and outcomes. By the start of the Biden administration, agencies had made progress in strengthening their capacity to collect, share, and use evidence across government.
The Biden administration built on that foundation by using executive action to push agencies to examine disparities more directly and improve how data captured differences across populations. Federal agencies assessed their capacity to produce equitable outcomes, and strengthened how data and affected communities informed those decisions, including for people with disabilities.
The Federal Evidence Agenda on Disability – an effort to grapple directly with gaps in how disability is measured and understood – is just one example of the Biden administration’s work to strengthen the evidence base needed to design more effective interventions and improve policy outcomes. Unfortunately this progress was short lived.
What Has Changed – And Why It Matters
The Trump administration has reduced both the capacity to produce data and the scope of what that data captures.These shifts affect how federal agencies collect, analyze, and apply data across policy areas – and disproportionately impacting people with disabilities:
- Eliminating staff responsible for data management and evaluation
- Canceling contracts that support program assessment
- Disbanding advisory bodies that brought outside expertise into federal decision-making
- Narrowing expectations around disaggregation and reduced emphasis on equity-focused analysis
- Scaling back research tied to public health, including efforts to track disparities in maternal health outcomes and access to care
- Pulling back from work on environmental exposure and climate risk, limiting the ability to identify which communities face the greatest threats. Incomplete data prevents policymakers from identifying disproportionate exposure and limits their ability to design effective responses
- Challenging the credibility of data that documents disparities, shifting attention away from what the data shows and toward whether it should be trusted
- Cutting research funding and federal partnerships are reshaping who enters and remains in the research pipeline, narrowing the range of questions being asked and the perspectives informing that work
These changes affect more than what data the government collects or what research gets funded. They also shape whether policymakers treat disparities as problems requiring targeted responses. This approach was recently on display in federal health policy, when the Secretary of Health and Human Services declined to acknowledge well-documented racial disparities in maternal healthcare, despite the clear data proving it. In a Congressional hearing, the Secretary of Health and Human Services defended the administration’s approach to maternal health while declining to acknowledge well-documented racial disparities, even as Black women remain significantly more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts.
The effects extend across policy areas. In health policy, beyond maternal mortality, researchers rely on disaggregated data to identify disparities in chronic disease and access to care. In environmental policy, gaps in data on exposure and risk can mask disproportionate impacts on low-income communities and communities of color, weakening enforcement and resource targeting. Examples abound from other critical areas in the government including at the Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Transportation. These attacks will have lasting effects on our ability to respond to those most in need, with the greatest harm falling on the most marginalized communities, especially disabled women of color.
What Needs to Happen Next
There is no doubt the administration will continue on its current course, scaling back data collection, research funding and equity-focused analysis. Congressional leaders can use oversight authority to press agencies on what data they collect, how they disaggregate it, and whether they continue to publish findings that identify disparities. They can also use appropriations and authorizing legislation to protect statistical agencies, restore funding for surveys and evaluation, and reinforce requirements under the Evidence Act to maintain strong evidence-building capacity across government. Lawmakers should also look to the Federal Evidence Agenda on Disability as a roadmap for the type of coordinated, data-driven inquiry that is now at risk, including efforts to identify gaps in outcomes and improve how agencies measure and respond to disparities.
Who Has a Role to Play
State and local governments sustain much of the country’s data collection and analysis. They operate surveillance and administrative systems that track health, economic, and environmental conditions, often with more timely or detailed data than federal sources. State investments in longitudinal data systems, such as California’s Cradle-to-Career Data System, illustrate how states can support integrated evidence infrastructure that can support policymaking across educational and workforce systems. As federal data infrastructure weakens, states can help preserve analytic capacity through continued investment in public dashboards, surveillance systems, and disaggregated reporting.
Philanthropy can reinforce this work, even if it cannot replace the scale or authority of federal investment. Foundations and philanthropic collaboratives help sustain research priorities and partnership that federal agencies may no longer support. Collaborative initiatives across major foundations to advance health equity and economic mobility demonstrate how philanthropy continues to invest in research and data systems that reflect persistent disparities and unmet needs in communities.
These groups, alongside civil rights advocates, researchers and professional associations are just a few of those that have an important role to play. We are in a moment of economic uncertainty, but the values behind evidence-based policymaking remain unchanged: collect meaningful data, assess impact, and improve outcomes across communities. We must work together to protect and strengthen the institutions that support this work, including federal statistical agencies, research funding, and the broader research community that collects, analyzes, and interprets evidence.
Efforts to politicize or weaponize data risk pushing institutions and advocates toward neutrality, or retreat, at the very moment sustained engagement is most needed. We must continue to prioritize research agendas and evaluation strategies that reflect the full diversity of people’s experiences and the barriers that persist. Left unaddressed, the Trump administration’s attacks on this infrastructure will weaken our ability to identify disparities, document harm, and respond effectively to the needs of communities, with some of the greatest impacts falling on Black and brown communities, people with disabilities and women.
Read the other posts in Taryn’s series about the economic security of women with disabilities:
