Introducing The Topline

As the audience for Cross Tabs grows, we’re rolling out a few new features and wanted you to know about them. Some of them may become features for subscribers only, most will remain accessible to anyone. I’ll keep you posted on what we do. For now, everything will be available for everyone as we work out the kinks on this new feature. Thanks for the patience.

We have a YouTube channel!

You might already know that, but in case I forgot to tell you, the channel is live, up to date, and has the complete (I think!) archive available if you prefer to watch podcasts, or if you just like using YouTube as your podcast player — if you do, rest assured, you are in the mainstream!

A revision to the posting cadence

Our schedule was off by a day this week as I took a much needed holiday over the weekend, but the ongoing schedule will be:

• Wednesdays: audio episodes are available, usually by mid-day eastern time
• Thursdays: a summary of the episode with referenced materials and a link to the YouTube version will go out to subscribers
• Friday: I’ll write an essay and share with you a round up of the week’s stories as they pertain to what’s happening with public data, opinion polling, and other publicly available research of note. We’re calling that issue of the newsletter The Topline.

We’re going to continue to roll out new features and ways to engage with the show and the newsletter — please let me know if you have any requests, questions, ideas for guests or topics, or want to know how to work together or how else you can support the show/newsletter.

Headlines

• Census Bureau under Trump seeks permission to delete questions about gender identity, Mike Schneider, Associated Press, 3/4/2025 (Archive)

  • The U.S. Census Bureau plans to remove questions about gender identity from the monthly Household Trends and Outlook Pulse Survey, which may set the stage for removal in the more comprehensive 2027 American Community Survey.

• Related: Census Bureau under Trump cuts loose expert advisers who work for free, Mike Schneider, Associated Press, 3/4/2025 (Archive)

  • The U.S. Census Bureau has terminated external advisory groups, including the Census Scientific Advisory Committee, the 2030 Census Advisory Committee, and the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations.
    

Threads & Social Posts

• A few words about FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver, Silver Bulletin substack, 3/5/25, (Archive)

  • 538 founder Nate Silver comments on the closure of the site, emphasizing the importance of data availability despite polling challenges.

• The Heritage Foundation DOGE Survey, (Archive)

  • Project 20205 progenitor The Heritage Foundation released a pointed survey supposedly measuring support and priorities for DOGE’s federal budget cuts. The link was shared across socials as people encouraged others to include their voice and/or disrupt the biased data collection.

  • IG: arghavansallesmd, Tumblr: nothorses, Tiktok: andstand89

@andstand89Thanks @Abby Rose for the great information on what NOT to do. #doge #theheritagefounation #elonmusk #whitehouse #politics

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Videos, Podcasts & Clips

• Extended Interview: Mark Graham on Internet Archive’s Work Preserving the Web as Gov’t Sites Go Dark, Democracy Now, 2/28/25 (Archive)

  • Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine initiative at the Internet Archive spoke with Amy Goodman about the collective efforts across multiple organizations and individuals working to archive webpages and data that are currently being targeted for mass deletion.

  • “The number of websites and webpages that have been removed in the last five weeks is significantly more than has ever happened in any change of administrations.” Mark Graham

  • “A threat, which is really more like an opportunity, is that we maybe are not able to fully realize our potential and to meet the need that people have to be able to collectively come together to preserve our cultural heritage, not just for these times, but truly for all times.” Mark Graham

  • Part one: preview segment (Archive).

The Current Unpleasantness

• How DOGE detonated a crisis at a highly sensitive nuclear weapons agency, Evan Halper and Hannah Natanson, Washington Post, 3/2/2025 (Archive)
• Hiring freezes, fewer grad students: Funding uncertainty hits colleges, Susan Svrluga, Washington Post, 3/3/2025 (Archive)
• War heroes and military firsts are among 26,000 images flagged for removal in Pentagon’s DEI purge, Tara Copp, Lolita C. Baldor and Kevin Vineys, Associated Press, 3/7/2025 (Archive)
• Struggling With Errors, DOGE Deletes Billions More From List of Savings, David A. Fahrenthold, Emily Badger and Jeremy Singer-Vine, New York Times, 3/3/2025 (Archive)

Have a great weekend. Don’t forget to backup your data.