Jan 15, 2022

A recently released email from the Census Bureau written during the administration of former President Donald Trump – when Wilbur Ross, introduced at a 2020 Congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., served as Secretary to the commerce overseeing the census – details how officials interfered with the national tally. Andrew Harnik/AP Andrew Harnik/AP A recently released email from the Census Bureau written during the administration of former President Donald Trump – when Wilbur Ross, introduced at a 2020 Congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., served as Secretary to the commerce overseeing the census – details how officials interfered with the national tally. Andrew Harnik/AP The administration of former President Donald Trump alarmed career Census Bureau officials not only by ending the 2020 national count early, but also urging them to change plans to protect people’s privacy and to produce accurate data, according to a recently published email. Trump’s political appointees to the Commerce Department, which oversees the office, have demonstrated an “unusually” high level “of engagement in technical issues, which is unprecedented from previous censuses,” according to an email. of September 2020 that Ron Jarmin – the assistant to the office manager – sent to two other senior officials. At the time, the administration was faced with the reality that if Trump lost the November election, he could also lose a chance to change the census numbers used to redistribute political representation. The window of opportunity was closing for his administration to attempt to radically reshape the future of the United States House of Representatives and Electoral College. Despite the 14th Amendment’s requirement to include the “total number of people in each state,” Trump wanted to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the census counts used to reallocate each state’s share of congressional seats and electoral votes. Although the former president’s unprecedented push failed to achieve its ultimate goal, it wreaked havoc on the federal government’s largest statistical agency, which was also dealing with the coronavirus pandemic upending most of its plans. for the count of a decade. Delays due to COVID-19 forced the office to conclude that it could no longer meet the legal deadline for reporting the first set of results and needed more time. The administration’s last-minute decision to cut the count short sparked public outcry, including a federal lawsuit that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. But his interference in other areas related to the 2020 census has largely flown over most radars. The recently published email – first reported by The New York Times and obtained by New York University Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice in an ongoing public records lawsuit – details the broad scope of his attempts to thwart bureau experts and tamper with the count. According to the document, the agency’s career officials saw when to stop counting as a “political decision that political leaders should make.” But methodologies and procedures for filling data gaps, examining the number of errors and protecting the confidentiality of people’s information must strictly stay within the reach of officials at “an independent statistical agency”, the e-mail says. mail. Trump officials — including Wilbur Ross, who served as Commerce Secretary — have, however, “expressed interest” in many technical areas, including exactly how the office could produce a state-by-state tally of unauthorized immigrants. and citizenship data that could have benefited Republicans politically. when electoral districts are redrawn. The email suggests bureau officials planned to discuss their concerns with Ross through the end of 2020. The bureau’s public information office did not immediately respond to questions from NPR about whether those discussions had taken place. npr Not all news on the site expresses the point of view of the site, but we transmit this news automatically and translate it through programmatic technology on the site and not from a human editor.