We’re celebrating the 250th anniversary of most of our armed services, recently celebrated the 100th of the National Park Service, are approaching the 90th anniversary of Social Security, the 60th of Medicare. The thing is, it takes time to build an institution. But sometimes it can be destroyed in an afternoon.
We are seeing a shift in the fundamental purpose and function of the federal government, a government that was established to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” is becoming an instrument to reward the Trump family and their allies and to exact political payback on their critics.
We have witnessed the destruction or attempted destruction of many constitutional principles and norms as well as institutions that 5 years ago were considered fundamentals of American life, including a professional, independent Department of Justice; free, universal public education; a vibrant public health system and federal healthcare; the notion that the federal government serves everyone, Red and Blue states alike; the independence of universities, the media, and other private institutions; the idea that federal decisions follow regularized procedures that ensure that all voices are heard; the idea of a professional, non-partisan civil service; and the fundamental principle that the military must never be turned on peaceful cities and citizens.
And these institutions, traditions, norms, and legal structures won’t be back any time soon. Now that international tourists and students are fleeing the U.S. in a flood, what will bring the world’s best and brightest back to MIT? Or bring the tourists back to Disney World? Now that it’s established that taking action that displeases a current or future president will get you fired, what civil servant or federal prosecutor will take on risky subjects?
Some of the changes Trump has made endanger our national security or threaten literally millions of lives. But it is doubtful that any will do the long-lasting economic damage of Trump’s assault on not just our independent economic agencies, but on the idea of independent, objective economic analysis and advice. Federal data are the worldwide gold standard. Whether they know the source or not, no person would build a new development; open or close a fire station or school; or invest in a business expansion without analyzing census projections. They never had cause to wonder – before now – whether these numbers reflected objective economic analysis.
The Trump administration has made no secret of its plan to wreck the 2030 census count. Project 2025 referred several times to a “conservative Census,” which, rather than trying to get an accurate count, would be enlisted as part of the partisan redistricting and immigration enforcement projects. Once partisanship and law enforcement are injected into Census counts and projections, they become worthless.
All business decisions also rely on sound economic analysis from the Fed, and the basic stability of the economy depends on the Fed doing the responsible thing in setting economic policy. Donald Trump has been completely transparent about his assault on the Fed. A Democrat is president? It doesn’t matter what the economic conditions are or how much economic harm it will do to consumers; Trump will demand that the Fed should raise borrowing rates because low interest rates help Obama or Biden. But if Donald Trump is president, then the answer is always to reduce interest rates, even if the economy is already red-hot.
It is hard to imagine that pressure from Donald Trump during his first term didn’t play some role in the Fed keeping interest rates at near-zero two years longer than they should have. This pressure has already harmed the Fed’s reputation for non—partisan objectivity. If Trump follows through on his threats and fires Fed Chair Jerome Powell, that will do generational damage.
And finally, undergirding it all, we need to know that the numbers provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) – inflation, unemployment, business inventories, wages and benefits, etc. – are timely and accurate. The leadership of BLS has reflected stability – 16 commissioners in 140 years – until Trump fired Erika McEntarfe 1 ½ years into her term, making her the shortest serving BLS commissioner ever. Supposedly, he was angered that BLS revised some earlier monthly statistics downward.
Shortly afterward, it seemed highly convenient that BLS cited the government shutdown as a reason to withhold monthly inflation and jobs numbers, just at a time when fears of a slowing economy, higher unemployment, and increased inflation were rippling through the economy. Besides showing that even the BLS is vulnerable to political pressure – a stain that could take decades to erase – the absence of this data means investors and consumers are flying blind, economically.
Jeff Colvin has spent his professional career as a research physicist, first at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and then at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the two US nuclear weapons design laboratories. He lives in Gettysburg part-time and is chair of Gettysburg DFA Government Accountability task force.
Leon Reed is a former US Senate staff member, defense consultant, and history teacher. He is a 10 year resident of Gettysburg, where he writes military history and explores the park and the Adams County countryside. He is the publisher at Little Falls Books, chaired the Adams County 2020 Census Complete Count Committee and is on the board of SCCAP. He and his wife, Lois, have 3 children, 3 cats, and 5 grandchildren.