Scholarship sat on a wall. Scholarship had a great fall
Can all the King's horses and all the King's men put scholarship back together again?
It happens I fall into that age range that needs to get a new Mumps, Measles, and Rubella shot because the one we received as children isn’t as effective as it’s supposed to be. When I went to see my doctor about this, she commented that the surge in Measles cases had seemingly come out of the blue.
It was already apparent that the folks Donald Trump was putting in charge of U.S. government health agencies were into all sorts of disinformation, about vaccines in particular, but also, importantly, about COVID-19. I replied softly, it isn’t just in medicine. It’s all of government.
As an scholar, this is no small matter. I have to evaluate the trustworthiness of sources of information. And, in the past, most scholars have treated most government agencies as reliable sources, certainly a step above journalists.
But the whole scandal over Jeffrey Epstein arises in no small part—as many have said—due to Trump’s own reliance on and promotion of conspiracy theories, especially including those about COVID-19 and vaccines. On Epstein, Trump has been hoist with his own petard and his attempts to wriggle out of a mess of his own creation have not gone well.[1] This is only the most recent example of the Trump administration seeking, to put it mildly, to fit facts to ideology.
Another attempt is now likely in the works: Today (August 1), “Trump fired the top Bureau of Labor Statistics official after the government published new data showing that U.S. hiring slowed sharply this summer,” suggesting[2] that “today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.”[3]
I’m not a fan of the unemployment statistics. There’s the headline “official” number, the U-3, but also five others (in all, numbered U-1 through U-6)[4] and when I looked at the criteria for each, I couldn’t make head nor tail of which category I fit in (I was still studying for my Ph.D. at the time) with my long-futile search for employment. It looked like a shell game, meant to exclude me.
But now, “the immediate worry among economists and former officials following Trump’s move was that it opened the door for the economic data to be distorted for political reasons.”[5] And of course the data will be, with Trump elevating loyalists and sycophants—in his epistemology, the “truth” is whatever he agrees with, often whatever makes him look good.
But it’s just one more domino to fall as Trump goes after climate crisis research, academia in general, and everything else he doesn’t like. In a children’s rhyme, “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty [Dumpty] together again.” It remains to be seen if, when Trump is gone, it is possible to recreate government agencies as credible sources of information.
[1] David Benfell, “Will ‘The Big Beautiful Bill’ crack Donald Trump’s white Christian nationalist monolith?” Not Housebroken, July 27, 2025, https://www.disunitedstates.org/p/will-the-big-beautiful-bill-crack
[2] Justin Lahart, Alex Leary, and Matt Grossman, “Trump Orders Firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics Chief,” Wall Street Journal, August 1, 2025, https://apple.news/AX-FJlPpwQh6Kct4ffJXDhA
[3] Donald Trump, quoted in Justin Lahart, Alex Leary, and Matt Grossman, “Trump Orders Firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics Chief,” Wall Street Journal, August 1, 2025, https://apple.news/AX-FJlPpwQh6Kct4ffJXDhA
[4] Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization,” August 1, 2025, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
[5] Justin Lahart, Alex Leary, and Matt Grossman, “Trump Orders Firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics Chief,” Wall Street Journal, August 1, 2025, https://apple.news/AX-FJlPpwQh6Kct4ffJXDhA