Trump Is Trying To Rig The Census And Hopes You Won't Notice, Key Senator Warns
WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump is trying to rig the 2020 census for political gain and his administration’s effort to quietly rush the national headcount will leave millions of people ― particularly communities of color ― politically weakened for at least a decade, a key senator is warning.
“They don’t really want the American people to know what’s going on with the census,” New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate subcommittee charged with funding the census, said in a Monday interview. “The administration from the very beginning has tried to meddle in the appropriate counting of all Americans.”
Trump has been trying to weaken the 2020 census count for years. It’s no coincidence that his efforts would disproportionately hurt minorities. He unsuccessfully tried to add a citizenship question to this year’s form, an effort that may still deter immigrants and people of color from participating. He created two new top-level positions at the Census Bureau and filled them with political appointees from outside the agency, an unprecedented move. He directed the federal government not to count undocumented immigrants when redrawing congressional districts next year, an act that constitutional experts say would be illegal.
Last month, the Census Bureau unexpectedly announced that it is ending its field operations early ― even after it had lost months of data collection time because of the coronavirus pandemic. The agency said census takers will only be knocking on doors until Sept. 30 instead of Oct. 31, the original cutoff, because it wants to stick to a Dec. 31 deadline to report the final U.S. population count.
Shaheen said this is nonsense. After the pandemic-related difficulties, the Trump administration knows Congress is willing to extend census deadlines, she said. The House has already passed a bill to do so and there is bipartisan support to do it in the Senate. But the administration is insisting...
