Changes To / Recoveries of Government Information
The Trump Administration (2025- ) has taken action to downsize federal government agencies through a variety of tactics including the use of Executive Orders. The impact of these changes has been dramatic and is ongoing. What follows are links to various efforts to track those changes and relocate information related to grant funding as well as research data and publications.
This guide does not claim to be comprehensive.
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NU Tracking Efforts | 
Grant Termination Trackers | Additional Trackers | Lists of Lost / Recovered Resources | Data Resources Captured | Archived US Federal Agency Websites | Tools for Data Rescue | Web Archiving - End of Term | Weekly Roundup
NU Tracking Efforts
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Responding to Federal PoliciesNorthwestern is closely monitoring and responding to federal actions, including Executive Orders and agency policy changes that affect higher education. This website provides updates and resources for members of the Northwestern community that are informed by a robust set of guiding principles.
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NU Leadership NotesSearchable by administrative officer and keyword.
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NIH Grant Terminations 2025This page is updated nightly with information on terminated grants, based on information published by HHS and self-reported terminations from scientists. Every effort is made to ensure accuracy, but there is uncertainty in data shared or published.
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NSF Grant Terminations 2025This tracker presents information on NSF grants that have been prematurely terminated since January 20, 2025.
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Grant WatchA project to track the termination of grants of scientific research agencies under the Trump administration in 2025. We currently are tracking terminations of grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
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Tracking Key Lawsuits Against the Trump AdministrationInside Higher Ed is tracking some of the key legal challenges related to higher ed and will refresh the database weekly, so check back on Mondays for updates.
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Classified CatalogFreedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) began tracking reports of government secrecy in January 2025. The Catalog will help journalists, researchers, Freedom of Information Act requesters, litigators, and members of Congress alike keep track of Trump’s assault on our right to know.
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Climate Deregulation TrackerIdentified steps taken by the Trump administration and Congress to scale back or wholly eliminate federal climate mitigation and adaptation measures. The tracker is linked to our database of climate change regulations and our two other climate regulation trackers: the Climate Reregulation Tracker covering the Biden administration and the Climate Backtracker covering the second Trump administration.
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Federal Data ForumThe Population Reference Bureau has launched this Forum as a place to share messages, materials, and announcements related to the U.S. federal statistical system and federal data products.
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National Parks and Public LandsThe National Parks Conservation Association have been tracking the major actions affecting national parks and public lands that have been implemented by the Trump administration
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Project 2025 Executive Action TrackerThe Center for Progressive Reform and Governing for Impact are monitoring the Trump administration’s implementation of Project 2025, tracking the authoritarian blueprint’s executive action proposals across 20 federal agencies.
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Project ImpactIncludes the Impact Map, which provides data as it becomes available on policy, funding, and workforce changes and their localized effect. Our goal is to present data as clearly and transparently as possible, with full visibility into our sources, so people can draw their own conclusions.
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Silencing Science TrackerTracks government attempts to restrict or prohibit scientific research, education or discussion, or the publication or use of scientific information, since the November 2016 election.
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Tracking Government Information"We are tracking actions by the current administration that impact government information, such as: removed or modified documents and websites; language censorship; suspension or elimination of agencies, program, funding, or services; and collection of government data. Our Goals:
- Help the public see the scope of what has been removed, modified, or impacted
- Point to where preserved copies of missing documents can be found, when possible<.ul>"
- Help the public see the scope of what has been removed, modified, or impacted
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Tracking State-Level DOGEsThe Revolving Door Project has identified at least 15 states have set up their own DOGEs, This 6/16/2025 blogpost provides more info.
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Trump TrackersAn effort by Kelly Smith, UCSD Libraries, to collect sites that track changes made by the Trump administration.
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Data Rescue Project Portalthe DRP Portal is a centralized, searchable hub, integrating datasets from multiple rescue efforts such as Public Environmental Data Partners, Safe Guarding Research & Culture, ICPSR, and more. The Portal makes it easy to discover rescued datasets by government offices sharing the data, topic, and more. By consolidating and preserving public data in one place, we are fortifying efforts to ensure that critical information remains accessible, discoverable, and secure.
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U.S. Global Change Research Program at globalchange.govThis site is down, reported on 6/30/25. Home of the National Climate Assessment among other research efforts, the Internet Archive has captured these pages and pdfs. See the GovSpeak errors report for 6/30/2025 for additional related links that are broken.
UPDATE 10/21/25: The 5th National Climate Assessment has been brought back online by the non-federal effort, Climate.us -
⚠️ data.census.govThe primary data access tool from the US Census Bureau is not functioning correctly and hasn't been for some time. This page links to alternative sources for US population data.
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⚠️ Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE)Funds have been withheld from 15 Inspector General offices of the federal government, as reported by NextGov/FCW on October 1, 2025. Archived copies of CIGIE webpages - oversight.gov - can be found at the Wayback Machine (Internet Archive). Another source: GovQuery.website, hosted by Program Integrity Alliance
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⚠️ National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)11/13/2025 UPDATE
NCES Datalabs Tables: Rescue Complete!
Summary Tables -- useful because they make it easy for researchers to understand the topline takeaways of the many NCES studies -- now available via Data Lumos -
Bureau of Labor StatisticsWhile no changes yet appear on the BLS Restricted Data Access (RDA) webpage as of 6/9/25, this information was shared via a professional listserv on 6/7/25:
"A faculty member received this.
As you may be aware, BLS has been transitioning the Restricted Data Access program to a Virtual Data Enclave. Unfortunately, due to limited resources, we are suspending access to most BLS restricted data for the foreseeable future.
We are longer able to support new or existing research projects except those using only restricted National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data.
We apologize for any inconvenience this causes.
Please refer to the BLS website for any future developments." -
ERIC database de-fundedUDPATE June 2025
The ERIC Journal List June 2025 includes those that will continue to be indexed (shown in blue), and those that no longer will be indexed (shown in gray) after review required by cost-cutting at the Dept of Education. Note that the links in the attached list will bring up all cataloged material from that title in the database. 159 sources (58 journals and 101 non-journals) will no longer be included going forward. More than 1,800 sources, including 1,215 journals and 608 non-journals, will continue to be indexed. Listings of journals and non-journals are available.
UPDATE April 28, 2025
Education Department restarts online library ERIC - "with a more refined scope".
UPDATE 4/23/2025
Due to further funding cancellations to the Dept of Education the ERIC database will cease all updates on April 23, 2025. NU Libraries has access to ERIC through the EBSCO company search platform and is investigating implications of this change.
- ERICA -- Access PDF files captured from the ERIC database by the EOT Crawl at The Web Archive -- use these easy instructions
- Going forward, see EDArXiv, which uses the OSF platform, an initiative of the Center for Open Science
- ERICA -- Access PDF files captured from the ERIC database by the EOT Crawl at The Web Archive -- use these easy instructions
⚠️ Former members of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee (CSAC), which was terminated in February, have formed a new Independent Census Scientific Advisory Group (I-CSAC). It appears from their website that their first meeting is scheduled for September 18 [2025].
"While no longer a federal advisory body, I-CSAC remains committed to transparency, scientific rigor, and the principle that reliable census data is vital to guiding public policy, ensuring fair representation and resource allocation, and helping businesses, communities and individuals make informed decisions."
Archived agendas, membership lists, charters, and meeting materials meeting minutes of the terminated Census Scientific Advisory Committee remain online.
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Save Our SignsA crowd-sourced effort to capture images of signs in National Parks before the 9/17/25 date for their reevaluation, was launched in response to Executive Order (EO) 14253, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” This website tracks progress and collects information related to signage in national parks and how American history is presented.
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⚠️ NCJRS Abstracts CeasedOn April 23, 2025 a test of the database revealed a near total loss of the indexing/abstracting content of this invaluable resource for the study of criminal justice.
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⚠️ NOAA 2025 Decomissioned DatasetsMay 5 2025 the datasets listed here will cease. Request options provided for some, others maybe rescued by various projects. Questions were answered, in part, by the following:
it "appears to be mostly a standard retirement of data notice. If you go through a few you will see that at least a high percentage have extremely low use over the last handful of years.” -
Project + 2025Policy Commons has indexed/captured reports and other items with the term “Project 2025”. Register on Policy Commons (it’s free) to view and receive updates when additional items added.
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Climate & Economic Justice Screening ToolDownloaded and rehosted prior to the end of the Biden administration, this mapping tool allows analysis of census tracts that are marginalized by under investment and overburdened by pollution. Data and geographic shapefiles are available for download.
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Thousands of U.S. Government Web Pages Have Been Taken Down Since Friday2/2/2025 NYT article (updated 2/3/25) by Ethan Singer. Methods used are described toward the end of the article under, "What the Times Did."
Archived US Federal Agency Websites
These are static pages! Examine each page to see date of website capture, typically posted top left corner, above any agency branding. For brief background on who/how/when see WebRecorder Blogpost March 25, 2025.
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GovArchive.usThese are archived websites from the US Government archived around the end of Biden’s and start of Trump’s presidential administrations, as part of the End of Term Web Archive. Our focus has been on complex and interactive websites.
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CDC Restored"RestoredCDC.org is an independent project, not affiliated with CDC or any federal entity. Visit CDC.gov for free official information. Due to archival on January 6, 2025, recent outbreak data is unavailable. Videos are not restored. Access data.restoredcdc.org for restored data. Use of this site implies acceptance of this disclaimer. "
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Climate.gov from NOAA Archivea mirror of NOAA's climate.gov archived on 1/17/25
This is a static website!!
See also: Climate.us which is rebuilding many of the tools provided by Climate.gov prior to the Trump Administration. See esp: 5th National Climate Assessment (2023) [posted 10/21/25] -
EPA Environmental Protection Agency Archiveas a mirror of epa.gov archived 1/18/25
This is a static website!! -
FEMA Federal Emergency Management Administration ArchiveMirror for fema.gov archived 1/24/25
This is a static website!! -
Institute for Museum & Library Services (IMLS) Archivemirror for IMLS.gov Captured 3/20/25
This is a static website!! -
US Agency for International Development (USAID) ArchiveThis webarchive version of the US AID website was created by WebRecorder on 01/16/2025, 07:05:56 AM
This is a static website!! -
US Dept of Education Archivemirror for ed.gov Captured 1/18/25
This is a static website! -
US Global Change Research Program Archivemirror for globalchange.gov captured 11/16/24
This is a static webpage!! -
US Sea Level Change Archivemirror for sealevel-globalchange.gov Captured 1/10/25
This is a static webpage!!
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Data Rescue Project Portalthe DRP Portal is a centralized, searchable hub, integrating datasets from multiple rescue efforts such as Public Environmental Data Partners, Safe Guarding Research & Culture, ICPSR, and more. The Portal makes it easy to discover rescued datasets by government offices sharing the data, topic, and more. By consolidating and preserving public data in one place, we are fortifying efforts to ensure that critical information remains accessible, discoverable, and secure.
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Data Rescue Project"There are many individuals, organizations, and community-based efforts to capture and preserve data in early 2025. Below are the efforts we are aware of and their collecting scopes."
This site replaces the original Google Doc created by Linda Kellam at UPenn. -
Data Rescue ResourcesChecklists, tools, alternative data resources, Economic Indicators, Public Health, other resource guides, additional reading
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Data Rescue Tracker"... a collaborative tool built to catalog existing public data rescue efforts so that we can coordinate better across initiatives. ... The Data Rescue Tracker aims to provide a consolidated overview of who is downloading which dataset from which government websites."
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Data Rescue Baserow DocumentList of data rescued thus far - discussed in this blogpost
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Data.gov ArchiveFrom the Harvard Law Innovation Lab - 16TB includes over 311,000 datasets
Search option announced 10/11/2025 -
CDC Datasets - Archived 1/28/2025Additional efforts to capture and catalog federal datasets are underway per listserv comments by employees of both ICPSR and IPUMS. [2/3/25]
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CDC Social Vulnerability Index dataData focusing on health and the environment
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UChicago Data MirrorCurrently [as of May 28, 2025], the full Census Bureau's TIGER/ Line Files and Shapefiles as well as the entirety of the historic and contemporary geographic data from the National Park Service are available, totaling 7 terabytes of data. Check back often, as datasets are continually updated.
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US AID Demographic Health SurveysBlogpost describing rescue of the summary data and GIs vector shapefiles for country subdivisions to Data Lumos. See also: IPUMS Global Health repository
UPDATE: 9/3/25 IPUMS Blogpost announcing that Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) Data Again Available to New Users -
Data Hoardera subReddit effort to capture US gov data, particularly CDC
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EDGI Environmental Data and Governance InitiativeEfforts to archive environmental data.
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Public Environmental Data Partners: Data + Screening ToolsA volunteer coalition .... To gather insights on what data to preserve, we reached out to our networks ... We compiled a large list of federal databases and tools, and prioritized them based on their relative impact, our confidence that we could archive them, and the relative effort it would take to obtain and archive them.
Fill out the form here to nominate data for us to preserve. -
Social Determinants of Health & Place ProjectBefore datasets were pulled from federally funded websites, our team grabbed multiple datasets at risk of being lost, along with many other organizations. Datasets and guidances include:
The Center for Disease Control (CDC)
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) -
A Renewed Call for Preservation of At-Risk Government DataThe University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research (ISR) and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) are also involved with data preservation efforts and provide links to their efforts and how to participate
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Curating for Data Rescuefrom the Data Curation Network
we created an abbreviated version of the CURATE(D) steps specifically with data rescue efforts in mind. In order to maximize the utility of data that is in need of rescue, it is imperative that the data are curated and documented. -
Checklist for USA federal data backups (MIT)"This checklist provides steps you can take to ensure the government data you use in your research remains accessible to you and others."
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University of Washington's GitBook for Data Rescues"This Gitbook is an information resource and customizable template for Data Rescue events. It was first developed by BKS Studio, LLC in collaboration with the University of Washington Center for Advances in Libraries, Museums, and Archives (CALMA) for Data Rescue events in Seattle in January 2025 and is available for remix and reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license."
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Data Rescue Event KitThis project contains materials for those interested in hosting data rescue events.
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End-of-Term Web ArchiveThe End of Term Web Archive captures and saves U.S. Government websites at the end of presidential administrations. The EOT has thus far preserved websites from administration changes in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. We are currently accepting URL nominations for the End of Term 2024 Web Archive.
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Archived Presidential White House WebsitesWhite House websites are Presidential records. The official files that make up a Presidential administration's website are preserved in our Executive Office of the President Electronic Records Archive. In order for the public to easily access the websites, the National Archives has taken an additional step to "freeze" the White House websites and make them available online. Because the archived websites are hosted by the National Archives and are historical material, they are no longer updated. Any broken links (internal or external) will not be updated.
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Govwayback.comAccess historical versions of U.S. government websites from before January 20, 2025 with a simple URL change. How it works:
Take any .gov URL and add wayback.com right after .gov, and you'll be redirected to the Wayback Machine's archived version of the page.
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U.S. Government Information: Weekly RoundupThe link takes you to a page created by Kelly Smith, UCSD Libraries whose work, "...attempt[s] to provide current awareness of federal government reports and activities. The page will be updated weekly to provide links to important, newsworthy, or interesting material published during the previous week. The goal is to keep the links to a manageable number for readers, not to be a comprehensive listing. All links are captured in the Internet Archive if possible, and a list of earlier roundups is available."
Government Activities Database
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TRAC Reports This link opens in a new window
"The purpose of TRAC is to provide the American people — and institutions of oversight such as Congress, news organizations, public interest groups, businesses, scholars, and lawyers — with comprehensive information about staffing, spending, and enforcement activities of the federal government."
TRAC = Transactional Records Access ClearinghouseAn example of the type of report which can be generated using TRAC Report data: First Days of Trump Administration: Did ICE Targeting Change? Feb 27, 2025
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Subjects: Government Information; Regulatory Compliance; Gender & Sexuality Studies
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Subjects: Government Information; Regulatory Compliance; Gender & Sexuality Studies
Northwestern University Library
1970 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Make an Appointment
847-467-6441