February 1, 2021 3:46 p.m.
Like so many episodes in the Trump era, one of the administration’s most audacious moves was first made public in a tweet.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was in a bind. At the time, a court order giving the Census Bureau more time to finish its count put in jeopardy Trump’s plan to fundamentally change how political power is doled out across the country. The President wanted to exclude undocumented immigrants from the congressional apportionment count, which would starve immigrant-friendly states of House seats while boosting the representation of whiter, more reliably Republican parts of the country.
January 18, 2021 1:44 p.m.
Census Director Steve Dillingham will be stepping down on Jan. 20, cutting short by nearly a year the five-year director term, which was scheduled to expire on Dec. 31.
Dillingham announced his resignation plans in an internal Census Bureau email obtained by TPM.
Dillingham’s tenure atop the bureau was plagued by myriad controversies since his confirmation in Jan. 2019. His refusal to publicly push back on the efforts by the President and his allies to politicize the 2020 census has long prompted criticism from both within and outside the bureau. In recent days, the scrutiny intensified with the revelation of his involvement in a pressure campaign to push the bureau’s experts to produce data on noncitizens and undocumented immigrants before the end of Trump’s presidency.
The efforts by President Trump’s cronies to politicize census data have continued to the bitter end of his administration, according to new information from the…
Update: This story was updated to include a response from Census Director Dillingham. The Census Bureau was told Tuesday evening to cease work on a directive…