The Hound | Aug. 19

Trump admin. has deleted more than 400+ government databases, how ICE worked with Iran, and more.

August 19, 2026

Hi there,

It’s Wednesday. The Trump administration has deleted at least 28 federal datasets and modified another 338 across more than 60 agencies — including a database of federal law enforcement misconduct records, a survey measuring violence against children and youth, and real-time pollution readings from U.S. embassies around the world. What ties the deleted datasets together is not bureaucratic redundancy — it is that every one of them produced findings that contradicted the administration's political priorities.

This is not data management. It is evidence destruction on a national scale. When a government systematically deletes records of police misconduct, child abuse, environmental contamination, and public health trends, it is not cutting red tape — it is ensuring that the public, researchers, journalists, and future administrations cannot know what actually happened on its watch. The public deserves reporting that treats the erasure of facts as the authoritarian act it is.

In addition, how the clock is ticking on leaded aviation fuel. And the companies that got $83 billion in tax breaks last year are all tied to the build-out of data centers.

Read about these, and more, with today’s stories:

Until next time,

Harry from The Hound

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