I recognize that many of us want to do...something...but may not know what we can do. I don't have the answers to that, but I do have some suggestions for you to consider.
1) Stay aware of the issues
There are a number of journalists doing their best to report on stories about every aspect of the government, including offices being closed, grants being withdrawn, and websites being removed or altered. I understand and appreciate the frustration some feel toward media outlets, but they remain the best source of information we have about federal activities.
Find the journalists and news sources you like and trust; I have found Bluesky to be invaluable in connecting with these sources. When reading articles or engaging with other media, keep in mind the possible political bias (i.e., how "left" or "right" the publication/article is, what perspective it tries to convey) but also read the article critically to judge its reliability on the actual facts. If in doubt, use a resource such as the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart to help make those determinations.
2) Share your voice
If you feel strongly about an issue, please consider sharing your thoughts directly with your elected officials. A brief email or phone call, or attending town halls, remains a highly effective way to communicate with those who are elected to represent you. There are many sources online to help you identify and contact your elected officials; one I find especially easy to use is from usa.gov. After entering your street address/city/state/zip code, you will get a list of federal, state, and local officials who represent you, along with various contact information.
3) Help archive/preserve federal websites and data
You may be aware of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which is a great tool for viewing archived copies of webpages. Did you know that anyone (yes, even you!) can use the Wayback Machine to capture webpages? If you find a federal webpage that you think should be preserved, go to the Wayback Machine home and enter the url in the top search bar to see if it has already been captured recently. If not, enter the url in the bottom "save page now" box to capture the page yourself; note that you can capture the same page again at a later date if you find the content has changed.
The Wayback page also includes a "Collection Search" area, with a dropdown menu that lets you search within an individual set of content such as the End of Term 2024 (or an earlier EOT) collection. This EOT collection is the product of a coordinated ongoing project to collect webpages across the federal web at the close of an administration.
Another archiving tool I've found helpful is archive.today. While not as well-known or as heavily used as the Wayback Machine, I have had better success with archive.today with some archiving attempts, such as certain social media posts. Generally, I first try to capture content with the Wayback Machine and, if that fails, I try archive.today.
If there are datasets you believe are important to archive, ICPSR (The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research) has a form you can use to suggest those datasets for archiving.
