On Jan. 24, the Atlas Tool disappeared — an interactive dataset on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website that tracks 20 years of data on a range of infectious diseases. Scientists monitoring infection patterns in hepatitis, HIV and others were suddenly flying blind.

And they were not alone: The CDC’s entire dataset went missing for several days, along with large chunks of the National Institutes of Health site. Data tracking mpox activity, vaccine recommendations and women’s health all went dark. Over the next several weeks, incomplete pieces of various datasets began to re-emerge. Many had been altered, although it was not clear how or by whom.

When asked by journalists about the disappearing data, the CDC issued a statement saying that the actions were taken to comply with executive orders issued by President Trump.

For scientists like myself, whose work depends on both data and funding from the federal government, this was unprecedented. The lights went out on our ability to monitor and protect public health.

Paired with the data purge was a “funding freeze” that halted huge swaths of critical research. Forward-looking studies on treatment for cancer, Alzheimer’s, autism and more were defunded. Thousands of scientists, researchers and public health professionals were either laid off or barred from working, forced to sit by while experiments fell apart.

The Trump administration is, in turn, both abandoning and........

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