Trump’s administration deleted data on Puerto Rico’s crisis from FEMA’s website

The Trump administration has removed statistics from a federal website that revealed how dire the crisis in Puerto Rico remains in the wake of Hurricane Maria, according to a new report.

As Jenna Johnson reports for the Washington Post, sometime between Wednesday and Thursday morning, the Federal Emergency Management Agency removed information that showed only half of Puerto Ricans have access to water and only 5 percent of the island has electricity. The website was set up to document the federal response to the hurricane.

A FEMA spokesperson told the Post that information about the electricity and water access are still publicly accessible on Status.pr, a site run by Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rosselló. That website is in Spanish.

On Friday, House Democrats criticized Trump’s administration for the removal of the information. “In response to the complete devastation in Puerto Rico, we have seen President Trump focus more on his public perception than on actually providing life-saving food, water, electricity, and medical aid to the Puerto Rican people whose lives are on the line,” Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM), chair of the Hispanic Caucus, said in an email to Vox. “I am outraged by the lack of transparency.”

President Trump has praised his administration’s “amazing” response to the hurricane, tweeting that the White House is doing “a GREAT job.” But as Vox’s Alexia Fernández Campbell has reported, the Trump administration has been slow to respond at virtually every step: