https://www.bettycjung.net/FGC-2026b.htm
2026 U.S. Federal Government Changes (May - August)
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The content was originally added to my U.S. Federal Government & Other National Statistics Sites webpage, which included links to various federal government webpages with data that I thought would be useful for Public Health and other related-field professionals.
When resources started to be removed, starting January 20, 2025, I started posting these changes on LinkedIn and BlueSky, so people would know what was no longer available. And, then other changes started happening, and I decided to document these changes on the Govstats.htm page noted above.
Finally, on August 14, 2025, NBC news item How Trump is reshaping government data. The Trump administration has influenced data used by researchers, economists and scientists - an effort that drew more attention after the president fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that access to federal government resources would be compromised by these continual removal of data sources, I created the 2025 Federal Government Changes webpage to document changes to U.S. federal government data sources.
As 2026 begins, I have resigned myself to the fact that data changes will continue, and it is imperative that future generations should have a record of what has been happening since January 20, 2025.
So, here is the webpage for May - August 2026 changes. If you think other content should be included, please contact me: 
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Legal Action Trackers Tracking the lawsuits against the Trump administration Last updated January 16, 2026 Trump Administration Litigation Tracker Erasure in Action Save Our Signs The Decoding DOGE archive USAFACTS.org Decoding DOGE covered government data and agencies related to the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of the second Trump administration. We're no longer making this newsletter. However, we've archived the issues below so you can still access context on major spending changes and DOGE decisions. |
Epstein Files Sources You are logged in as Jeffrey Epstein, jeevacation@gmail.com Search Epstein files using a Gmail format. The Jmail Encyclopedia the encyclopedia of people, places, and events from the Epstein scandal grounded in Jmail data.AI-generated from government-released emails and documents. A supplement to Wikipedia. |
9/4/2025 - If there wasn't a felon in the White House, taxpayer money wouldn't be wasted on contesting all the laws he is breaking and all the illegal actions he has been taking, like denying people of their rights (due process). [https://bsky.app/profile/bettycjung.bsky.social/post/3lxz3rxvrls2z]
2025 Highlights
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May Day in Seattle, May 1, 2026 Chief Justice Roberts fears that the SCOTUS is losing legitimacy. Wonder why? https://bsky.app/profile/666therealsatan666.bsky.social/post/3mkuyy42l7k2x May 2, 2026.
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When Revision is Wrong
Historical Negationism: This involves denying the veracity of facts or manipulating data to promote a false narrative, often seen in the denial of genocides. Dishonesty and Distortion: Intentionally misrepresenting the historical record to fit a particular ideology or political agenda is a misuse of history. "Whitewashing": This occurs when negative aspects of history are minimized or ignored to make the past seem more palatable or to protect certain beliefs or groups, as noted in Quora. Lack of Integrity: When sources are misrepresented, evidence is ignored, or conclusions are predetermined to serve an agenda rather than the pursuit of truth, the historical process is corrupted. The Key Distinction
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Not only is this in poor taste, it is sacrilegious. And, he calls himself a Christian? What a hypocrite. https://bsky.app/profile/bettycjung.bsky.social/post/3mkv6irdxuk2u
@FurkanGozukara 4/30/26. Absolute insanity. Donald Trump admits he judges the Chairman of the Federal Reserve not on economic policy or interest rates, but because the Fed didn't give Trump's real estate company a massive building renovation contract! The corruption is completely out in the open.
Conspiracy theories have been central to Donald Trump's political rise. He was a leading promoter of the "birther" conspiracy theory targeting then-President Barack Obama, embraced outlandish theories about a "deep state" in the government and still pushes false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
But conspiracy theories, and the people who support them, are unpredictable and hard to control. Now, Trump is increasingly the subject of conspiracy theories on both the left and the right, with many of his onetime supporters viewing him with growing skepticism.
The U.S. is withdrawing approximately 5,000 troops from Germany, Pentagon officials said, after President Donald Trump was angered by criticism from the German chancellor over the war with Iran. Speaking to students in Germany this week, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. has "no strategy" and was being humiliated by Iran's leadership.
A federal appeals court granted the state of Louisiana's request to reinstate a nationwide requirement that abortion pills be dispensed in person. The ruling limits access by blocking people's ability to obtain mifepristone - one of the two pills used in medication abortions - through telehealth and by mail. Telehealth prescriptions have been key to maintaining abortion access in states that outlawed or restricted the practice after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
The numbers: A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that 61% of Americans believe it was a mistake to use military force against Iran.
Comparison: It wasn't until three years into the Iraq War that Americans reached a similar level of disapproval (59%).
And: Gallup found that 61% of Americans disapproved of the Vietnam War in 1971, after more than 50,000 U.S. troops died over years of fighting.
What to know: Today marks 60 days since the start of U.S. strikes against Iran. The president is required to seek congressional authorization for any military conflict past 60 days.
But: President Donald Trump told Congress today that the conflict "terminated" with the April 7 ceasefire, which he told reporters he believes gives "additional time" before he must seek congressional authorization.
Exclusive: Construction crews expanding Trump's signature southern border wall ran machinery through a 1,000-year-old, 200-foot-long ground etching that looks like a fish.
More: The etching, known as an intaglio, is a significant cultural heritage site for Native Americans and lies inside the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.
Exclusive: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services inadvertently included some health care providers' Social Security numbers in a public database.
More: A CMS spokesperson said that the problem was a result of some providers entering information "in the wrong places" and that steps were taken to "address it promptly."
Misinformation from top health officials in the Trump administration has created a "crisis of public trust" - and Congress should conduct oversight hearings and possibly impeach officials such as Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), according to a recently released report.
Experts say that officials in the past year have focused intently on both vaccines and autism, including efforts to connect autism to the use of acetaminophen (frequently sold as Tylenol) during pregnancy, despite growing evidence of no link, and replacing all members of the federal autism committee with advisers who have anti-vaccine and pseudoscientific histories.
Autism, HHS, and Public Health: Unpacking Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Year in Misinformation Autistic Self-Efficacy Network
The report includes a timeline of all HHS actions taken in the first year of the second Trump administration. Such changes have been "harmful to its mission" and "detrimental to the autistic community", such as widespread layoffs, reductions in force and terminations, cutting autism research by about $31m, and removing warnings about dangerous and unproven autism treatments from the website of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at ASAN.
Kennedy said in recent budget hearings that home health aides might be defrauding the government, because some caregivers were "getting paid to do things that they used to do as family members for free", Kennedy said. The assertion prompted "constant outrage" among disabled people and their loved ones, because paid family caregivers frequently can't work other jobs or support their family members without this assistance, Rosa said.
Last April, according to the report’s timeline, the administration made several high-profile moves, including issuing reduction-in-force notices and closing the office managing freedom of information requests, which diminished the capacity and transparency of health agencies.
Officials touted leucovorin, a B vitamin, as an autism treatment, and said that Tylenol use during pregnancy led to autism in a September announcement. Yet the FDA recently approved leucovorin only for a rare folate deficiency, not autism, and a growing body of research points to no link between autism and acetaminophen.
"We'd really like to see Congress hold RFK Jr and HHS broadly to account for everything they’ve done over this past year that has been so harmful to the autistic community and to public health generally, with oversight hearings," Gross said. "If, for example, RFK Jr is found in those hearings to have been derelict in his duty as secretary, then Congress should impeach him."
"Well, I wouldn't have to. I didn't say that," Trump responded. "I said that if we left right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild. But we're not leaving right now. We’re gonna do it so nobody has to go back in two years or five years."
In reality, Trump did say - on camera - what the reporter told him he said. His denial was yet another case in which the president wrongly asserted he hadn’t said something he had said in a public forum.
It's one thing for the president to try to deny having made a remark someone claimed he made in a private meeting. For years, Trump has attempted something more brazen: denying he ever made remarks the public saw him make.
In December 2025, for example, when an ABC News reporter asked Trump on camera whether he would release the video of the US military's controversial follow-up strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean, Trump said, "I don't know what they have, but whatever they have we'd certainly release, no problem." But when another ABC News reporter reminded him five days later that he said he would have no problem releasing the video, Trump falsely claimed, "I didn’t say that. That's - you said that, I didn't say that. This is ABC fake news."
During his 2024 campaign, Trump falsely denied he had said “lock her up” about his 2016 election opponent, Hillary Clinton, though he had done so on multiple occasions at televised rallies attended by thousands of people. During the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, he denied having made two remarks he had made on camera the previous week.
Trump has also tried to inaccurately portray the nature of some of his previous public remarks. In an interview with Time magazine in April 2025, he wrongly claimed he had "obviously" been speaking "in jest" and exaggerating when he promised during his 2024 campaign to immediately end the war in Ukraine if he was elected again - though he publicly made the promise on more than 50 occasions in an entirely serious manner.
The numbers: A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll conducted April 24-28 found that 62% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job as president.
More: Trump’s handling of the cost of living (76%), inflation (72%) and the war with Iran (66%) received the highest levels of disapproval.
Officials at the Food and Drug Administration have blocked publication of several studies supporting the safety of widely used vaccines against Covid-19 and shingles in recent months, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed. The studies, which cost millions of dollars in public funds, were conducted by scientists at the agency, who worked with data firms to analyze millions of patient records. They found serious side effects to be very rare.
In October, the scientists were directed to withdraw two Covid-19 vaccine studies that had been accepted for publication in medical journals. In February, top F.D.A. officials did not sign off on submitting abstracts about studies of Shingrix, a shingles vaccine, to a major drug safety conference. The withdrawal of the studies is the latest step by the administration to try to limit access to vaccines. It has sharply cut research funding for vaccine development, released unvetted information casting doubt on vaccines, and blocked other information supporting their safety, most recently a paper on Covid vaccine effectiveness by career scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In February, top F.D.A. officials did not sign off on submitting abstracts about studies of Shingrix, a shingles vaccine, to a major drug safety conference. Last June, Kennedy's office asked career C.D.C. staff members to delete from the agency's website a 17-page summary supporting the safety of thimerosal, an additive largely removed from vaccines 25 years ago. Career scientists were later called into Health and Human Services legal offices and grilled about how the summary had been posted in the first place, they previously told The New York Times.
In posts on a website and on social media in August, Mr. Kennedy called for a prominent journal to "immediately retract" a large Danish study concluding that the vaccine additive aluminum salts was safe. Dr. Christine Laine, the editor in chief of the journal, Annals of Internal Medicine, said Mr. Kennedy did not directly contact the journal seeking a retraction. The study was not retracted.
In recent weeks, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who was serving as interim leader of the C.D.C., canceled the publication of a report concluding that the Covid vaccine sharply cut the odds of hospitalizations and emergency room visits last winter, saying the study had limitations.
Dr. Aaron S. Kesselheim, a Harvard University medical professor who studies F.D.A. regulation, said he had worked with the agency on a number of research papers and found its work to meet "the highest standards of scientific investigation." He suggested that the request to pull the papers was an act of "censorship." He added: "At any other time in history, this would be a major scandal that would lead to congressional hearings and resignations of leadership, and I hope that's what happens next."
The withdrawn F.D.A. studies examined the safety of the Covid vaccines used in 2023 and 2024. The agency's scientists worked with outside data firms that compile and analyze massive data sets under contracts that cost taxpayers millions of dollars each year. Both studies saw some light of day before they were pulled from publication. One, which examined the Covid vaccine in people older than 65, was posted on a preprint server, which is a repository for studies that have not yet undergone peer review. The study reviewed the records of about 7.5 million Medicare beneficiaries who got the vaccine. The researchers focused on the period of about 21 days after they got the vaccine and compared it to the next 20 days. They were looking to see if there were more health problems in the period right after vaccination.
The study looked at 14 health outcomes potentially caused by the vaccine, including heart attacks, strokes and Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune condition sometimes associated with vaccines. They only found a concern with one outcome, anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction affecting about 1 in a million people, from the Pfizer vaccine. "No other statistically significant elevations in risk were observed," the study said.
The study was withdrawn after it had been accepted by the peer reviewed journal Drug Safety, according to people familiar with the work. Michael Stacey, a spokesman for the journal, said it deems submissions to be confidential and would not comment on them. The Times obtained a copy of the Covid vaccine safety study of people who were 6 months to 64 years old. An abstract of the study appeared at one conference and remains online. Its withdrawal was first reported by STAT News. That study examined the records of 4.2 million Covid vaccine recipients and examined their later experience with 17 conditions, including swelling of the brain, major blood clots, stroke and heart attacks. The study found rare cases of fever-related seizures and myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, known to be associated with Covid vaccines. "Given the available evidence, F.D.A. continues to conclude the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks," the study said.
Angela Rasmussen, an editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, said the paper had been withdrawn by the authors. Dr. Caleb Alexander, a drug safety and methodology expert at Johns Hopkins University, reviewed both studies at the request of The Times and said that "no study answers every question" but "there is nothing inherently problematic regarding these reports." "It's too bad that these haven't seen the full light of day," Dr. Alexander said in an email. "They provide useful information regarding the most commonly used COVID-19 vaccines."
Jeffrey Morris, director of the University of Pennsylvania biostatistics division, who also reviewed the study drafts at the request of The Times, said the studies were generally well done. "I think if there's any critique," he said, "it's that they don't do enough of these studies with the resources they have."
Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, a former high-ranking National Institutes of Health official and chief executive of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said that F.D.A. leaders withdrawing papers from publication is a "pretty active act of sabotage." "This black box of decision making around data suppression should be having people very alarmed and very worried," said Dr. Marrazzo. She filed a whistle-blower complaint against the N.I.H., was fired by Mr. Kennedy and has since sued the agency, claiming that she was ousted for objecting to its policies.
By contrast, Mr. Kennedy's team has had lower standards for releasing information critical of vaccines. A memo by Dr. Prasad, the former head of the F.D.A.'s vaccine division, drew widespread news coverage by claiming that the Covid vaccine had been linked to the deaths of 10 children, a conclusion the agency has not backed up or explained. In February, agency officials did not sign off in time for staff to submit abstracts on two studies of the Shingrix vaccine to a drug safety conference, according to two people familiar with the decision. A senior administration official said the studies were not moving forward at the agency.
One study found the efficacy to be in line with findings from the clinical trials done before agency approval. A safety study also aligned with what was known, finding an elevated but low risk for Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune disease already noted in the vaccine’s label.
Dr. Helen Chu, an infectious disease doctor who was among 17 scientists fired from an influential vaccine advisory body at the C.D.C. last summer, said large studies by health agencies are closely watched by doctors and professional societies. They are important, she said, because they can examine the effect of a vaccine on millions of people, far more than the thousands that were tracked in clinical trials. "You really do need these studies for us to truly be safe and to make sure that vaccines continue to be safe," she said. "These types of studies have to be done and the results have to be published."
What happened: The union yesterday accused Kennedy Center officials of violating its contract by laying off employees without first negotiating with the union.
And: The suit also claims the Kennedy Center is using a planned closure for renovations "as cover to permanently eliminate union jobs."
Background: Trump has taken particular interest in the Kennedy Center this term, overhauling its leadership and announcing a two-year closure for renovations amid falling ticket sales.
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