The News You Need, Wednesday, August 19, 2026
Trump Attacks 366 Federal Data Sites / Ossoff Takes The Gloves Off / Data Centers Will Explode Carbon Emissions / Russian Pol Gets Eleven Years for Ukraine Criticism / Blanche and the Destruction of Justice / Trump Trumpets American Impotence
Trump’s Disappearing Data Archives
The Guardian
Scott: Trump’s burning hot hatred of science is matched by his disgust over the collection of raw data, the basic building block of scientific research. Why? Because this enables scientific research and often enough the lies that he and his collaborators spew about subjects like vaccinations and global warming. The Guardian has surveyed the damage he has done in “disappearing” government data bases.
Health data appears to be most affected by administration’s attempt to wipe findings that don’t align with its priorities, tracker shows.
A database of federal law enforcement officer misconduct records. A survey measuring physical, sexual and emotional violence against children and youth. Real-time pollution readings collected by air quality monitors from US embassies around the world.
These are among the hundreds of federal datasets that the Trump administration has taken down or altered as part of its aggressive campaign to wipe all mentions of data findings that do not align with the administration’s priorities.
Over the past year and a half, at least 28 federal datasets have been deleted and another 338 data collections have been modified, according to an online tracker released last week from dataindex.us, a group of data policy experts, researchers and developers that formed last year to monitor changes to government data.
“We’re at a very vulnerable point as a nation,” said Denice Ross, former US chief data scientist under the Biden administration and a co-founder of dataindex.us. “We’re facing a future where we are not going to have the information that we need to make decisions that will save lives and benefit American communities.”
The tracker includes detailed information about deleted or altered datasets from more than 60 federal agencies that span the environment, labor, law enforcement and other topics. But datasets on health appear to be the most affected by the Trump administration’s crackdown, comprising about 40% of the total number of terminated or altered data collections tracked by dataindex.us.
One of the main changes to these health datasets is that they no longer collect information on queer and trans people – as part of Donald Trump’s executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”.
Multiple Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) surveys, for example, have removed questions about respondents’ gender identity. These include the National HIV Surveillance System, the primary source of case data for HIV infections, the National Violent Death Reporting System, the CDC Diabetes Prevention Recognition Program, the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey and specific surveys evaluating Prep uptake among gay men and in communities of color.
In addition, there are at least four health datasets that are no longer being updated at all, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration’s (Samhsa) Drug Abuse Warning Network, a surveillance system that doctors and public health researchers used to track drug-related emergency room visits in near real-time to spot emerging overdose trends.
“These data are critical for identifying emerging epidemics and what parts of the population are most vulnerable to different types of health conditions,” said Thomas Babor, a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut who specializes in public health and addiction.
“Never before have we seen so little effort to hide so much corruption.”
The Guardian
Charles: Last weekend in Augusta, Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff tore into Donald Trump with the barnstorming millions of Democrats have been waiting for. Nothing was off limits, from the massive corruption of the Trump family–”they’re crooks, and everybody knows it”–to the constant presence of Trump’s favorite blonde aide, Natalie Harp.
Ossoff declared:
Did you hear what this man said two weeks ago? Quote: ‘It’s not possible,’ the president said, ‘for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid or Medicare.’ He said: ‘We can only afford to fund war.’ Because draft-dodging Donald loves sending other people’s children to war…
A war no one voted for and no one can explain, And the daily, the hourly lying to the American public about why we’re at war, whether we’ve won, what’s been agreed to, not to mention the insane genocidal threats.
Georgia Senator and budding Presidential Contender Jon Ossoff
On day 10 of the war, the president said, quote: ‘The war is very complete.’ That was day 10. Then, day 11: ‘Going to be finished pretty quickly.’ Day 12: ‘We won.’ Day 21: ‘Getting very close.’ Day 32: ‘Leaving very soon.’ Day 40: ‘Total and complete victory.’ Yesterday, day 49, Trump said Iran had opened the strait – except this morning the strait was closed, and it looks like Iran hit a cargo ship.
He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.
The faithless president depicts himself as Christ while he plunges the nation into wars of choice, while he and his family rake in billions from foreign princes, while he plunders our healthcare to cut taxes for the rich.
Meanwhile, rent, power, groceries and healthcare have all hit all-time highs this year. While you pay more for everything, the first family’s wealth is growing by billions of dollars – because they’re crooks, and everybody knows it.
White House Aide Natalie Harp
How much do you guys know about Jared Kushner, Ivanka’s husband? He’s on the Saudi payroll for $2bn, did you know that? And now he’s leading American diplomacy in the Middle East, apparently, while at the very same time asking princes and sheikhs across the Arab world to give him billions more.
Can you imagine, like a normal, sitting US ambassador just hitting up Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman for billions of dollars? But he’s a Trump, a royal, a princeling. The rules are for us, not for them. And it’s not just Jared getting in on the action. Never before have we seen so little effort to hide so much corruption. The Mar-a-Lago mafia has taken American corruption to spectacular new heights.”
Big Tech’s data centre boom poised to drive up carbon emissions
Financial Times
Meta’s $1bn, 520-acre data centre under construction in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin last month, one of seven major data centre projects pending in the state © Mark Hoffman/USA Today Network/ Reuters
Scott: Big Tech is quick to ensure that their new data centers will have incalculable positive effects for the entire world, starting with the communities in which they are located. But they’re remarkably hesitant to share hard numbers. So FT decided to take a look at just one simple question: how will the data centers affect carbon emissions?
Big Tech’s data centre building boom could create a huge new source of carbon emissions as the surging demand for electricity sparks a wave of fossil-fuel power plants, despite companies’ climate commitments.
An FT analysis of 60 of the largest planned data centres being built in the US by Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta found that they could together produce 101.5mn tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year once fully operational, based on the most recent snapshot of US power generation.
That would be equivalent to about 7 per cent of US power-sector emissions in 2025 — the annual emissions of 27 coal plants or 24mn petrol-powered cars.
“This is a reasonable ballpark estimate,” said Jonathan Koomey, an energy researcher who has studied energy efficiency and climate solutions. “It is a relatively small fraction of the total but it’s still a big increase compared to what the data centre companies were saying they were going to do five years ago, because they all had emission-reduction plans.”
The data centre boom is also spurring the construction of new fossil-fuel power plants. Three-quarters of the utilities serving the 60 projects are planning or building new gas-fired capacity, according to the FT’s analysis, based on utility filings, S&P data and analytics firm DC Byte. A third of those that operate coal plants are also delaying retirements.
The FT estimates underscore how the AI infrastructure boom threatens to undermine years of progress in cutting emissions from US electricity generation, even as Big Tech companies pledge billions of dollars for clean energy.
