The team behind America’s Essential Data, with support from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Public Environmental Data Partners (PEDP), and The Impact Project, has curated a list of United States federal datasets, variables, and data tools which have been terminated or removed from public online access in 2025.
This resource – briefly renamed “Dearly Departed Datasets” during Halloween 2025 – attempts to capture losses to federal data that go beyond routine updates or removals, and is a direct response to federal agencies’ move to comply with White House executive orders since January 2025 that are aimed at removing language related to gender, DEI, and climate change from the public record.
A longer blog post authored by Denise Ross (Federation of American Scientists, former U.S. Chief Data Scientist) provides a more in-depth look at the methodologies used to identify threatened data and the broader implications of their removal.
dh+lib Review
This post was produced through a cooperation between Claire Burns and Kelly Karst (Editors-at-Large), Ruth Carpenter and Rachel Starry (Editors for the week), Claudia Berger, Caitlin Christian-Lamb, Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara, Linsey Ford, Pamella Lach, Molly McGuire, Hillary Richardson, and Christine Salek (dh+lib Review Editors), and Tom Lee (Technical Editor).