On the first Friday of every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases federal data on unemployment, jobs and wages from the month prior.

Sometimes the economic outlook is good, sometimes it isn’t. It’s not perfect, but Americans have always been able to count on those numbers for the best estimates possible, unbiased and unpolluted by politics.

When the bureau released its most recent jobs report, President Trump didn’t like what he saw and fired Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, who had been confirmed last year by a bipartisan vote of 86-8 in the Senate. This move drew rebukes from both sides of the aisle.

As the political firestorm ignited by the president’s actions continues, one thing is clear: The episode has chilling implications for the federal government’s other research and statistical agencies, the offices responsible for measuring and assessing a wide range of issues that affect American life.

Early in my career I served in one of those offices — the National Institute of Justice, the research and evaluation arm of the Department of Justice. Two decades later, I returned to the department as the assistant attorney general, overseeing both the National Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

My strategy for the science agencies was to bring in top experts to lead these offices, fight for the resources they needed to do their jobs and then get out of the way.

Thanks to exceptional scientific leaders and expert career staff, the Bureau of Justice Statistics cleared the backlog of reports that had

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