Article by Mark Schmitt: “We’re learning a lot about how government can shape our lives by watching the second Trump Administration dismantle it. One lesson is that government’s capacity to do good runs on information no less than on funding and regulations. From weather and economic forecasts to the census to predictions of other countries’ military capabilities to vaccine monitoring, data and ideas generated inside and outside of the federal government have guided decisions in a world of profound complexity. But as the young men of Elon Musk’s DOGE figured out quickly, information is also a point of vulnerability for the entire workings of government, and it can be exploited by those like Musk and Trump who seek to disable government, concentrate its power, or redirect that power to private profit.
Dozens of small federal agencies devoted to information and ideas have been gutted; expert advisory commissions disbanded; and grants for libraries, museums, and scientific and health research cut off without review. Indicators such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which always had strong conservative support, have been cancelled, pared back, or delayed, often because contracts were arbitrarily canceled, advisory panels dissolved, and key staff fired.
Much of the loosely connected galaxy of information and data that guides policy falls outside the formal boundaries of government, in a pluralistic set of institutions that are independent of the administration or political parties. Along with universities, independent policy research organizations—think tanks—are key to the system of knowledge production and policy ideas, particularly in the United States. Every think tank, aside from the few that maintain an allegiance to the current Administration, now faces a test: How do they not only survive, but remain relevant when the assumptions and processes under which they were born have been wiped away? How can their capacities be put to good use at a moment when the idea of informed decision-making is itself under attack, when little matters other than the raw and often arbitrary exercise of power?..(More)”.
