Commerce Quietly Strips Political-Interference Language From Science Policy

The Commerce Department has removed the language in its scientific integrity policy that barred political interference in the collection and analysis of federal data, a revision that former officials say strips away the department's only formal guardrail against pressure on its statistics.

The change is dated Aug. 19. It came a day after the Census Bureau posted an unusual, unauthored report on voting by non-U.S. citizens, produced by a team with ties to a think tank founded by officials from President Trump's first administration. The revised policy applies across the department: the Census Bureau, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which produces the country's weather data, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which compiles gross domestic product.

What was taken out

A January 2025 version of the policy explicitly prohibited attempts to shape or interfere with data collection and statistical analysis "against well-accepted scientific methods and theories or without scientific justification." It required agencies to ensure findings were "not suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes," and called for independent review where appropriate.

Those protections are absent from the new text. The definition of scientific integrity survives in a similar form, but the passage listing freedom from inappropriate influence among its hallmarks is gone. Commerce and Census spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.

Nancy Potok, a former deputy director of the Census Bureau who also served at Commerce, called it "a major change that eliminates the guardrails against political interference in the statistical and scientific data products of the department." She noted the revision runs against a years-long effort, including a 2018 law and the federal rule data experts know as the Trust Regulation, to keep federal statistics impartial.

Robert Santos, a former Census director, said the timing of the revision and the posting of the unauthored report was striking, and argued that publishing a partisan external document on the bureau's own website "exemplifies inappropriate influence."

Pressure on a bureau already stretched

The policy change lands on an agency under strain. In June the administration barred the bureau from using differential privacy, a long-standing disclosure-protection method, delaying new American Community Survey estimates and potentially reducing the local-level statistics the bureau can publish about small populations and rural areas.

The administration has also signaled significant changes to the 2030 census, including proposals tied to citizenship questions and revisions to race and ethnicity categories. Workforce cuts have cost the bureau experienced statisticians, economists and career staff at the point when it is preparing a count that will redistribute political representation and federal funding for a decade.

The rewritten policy also narrows how alleged violations are investigated, reducing the role of department lawyers. Beth Jarosz, vice president of the Association of Public Data Users, said the new structure "leaves lots of opportunities to put pressure on staff to act in a certain way," and that whatever guardrails remain "are much weaker than they used to be."