NEW: Emails show career officials at the Census Bureau tried to warn the Trump admin that cutting the #2020Census schedule short would lead to "fatal data quality flaws that are unacceptable" and risked the perception of "politically-manipulated results."
npr.org/2020/09/20/914…
2. These internal emails, memos and other docs were released this weekend as part of the Nat'l Urban League-led lawsuit in California over the shortened #2020Census schedule. They show career officials trying to hold the integrity of the census together in the last weeks of July.
3. I started this thread earlier this weekend with some highlights from what I found in the documents. Stand by for more #2020Census receipts...
4. On 7/21, 2 career officials, Kathleen Styles & Ben Page, began circulating separate draft documents with others at Census Bureau that tried to put plainly, as Styles wrote in this email, "why we need every minute of the requested schedule extension."
assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7213…
5. The internal document by Ben Page, the Census Bureau's chief financial officer, emphasized that additional time to review the #2020Census results is "essential to ensuring an accurate and complete count" especially in light of delays caused by COVID-19:
assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7213…
6. This 7/21 version of an "Elevator Speech" first drafted by Kathleen Styles, the Census Bureau's chief of 2020 census communications and stakeholder relations, warns: "Curtailing census operations will result in a census that is of unacceptable quality"
assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7213…
7. This section of the draft "Elevator Speech" is worth a close read:
documentcloud.org/documents/7213…
8. From 7/23 version of "Elevator Speech": "Shortening the time period to meet the original statutory deadlines ... will result in a census that has fatal data quality flaws that are unacceptable for a Constitutionally-mandated national activity."
assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7213…
9. By July 20, the Census Bureau's public position had become so uncertain that Chief Financial Officer Ben Page was not sure how to answer questions from leaders in Congress about whether the agency still needed #2020Census reporting deadlines changed:
documentcloud.org/documents/7213…
10. Career bureau officials tried to prepare Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham, a Trump appointee, to convey need for deadline extensions to lawmakers during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on 7/29. A key slide from prep materials:
documentcloud.org/documents/7213…
11. That's not how the Census Bureau director's testimony before the House oversight committee on 7/29 turned out. My earlier thread:
12. The day after the House hearing, Census Bureau's senior managers learned Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a Trump appointee who oversees bureau, wanted a formalized plan for shortening the #2020Census by 8/3. That was also the day I broke this story:
npr.org/2020/07/30/896…
13. Career officials at Census Bureau managed to flesh out a new plan for a shortened #2020Census schedule despite their recommendations against doing so. Michael Thieme, an asst director in charge of #2020Census systems & contracts, noted the "great work under high pressure."
14. "The whole effort was excellent. Now I just wish it were for a more positive situation than what we're facing," Michael Thieme wrote after career officials at Census Bureau cobbled together a plan for a shortened #2020Census that Trump admin wanted.
documentcloud.org/documents/7213…
15. There are a lot of twists and turns in how the Trump administration shortened the #2020Census schedule (and I'm preparing to learn more from the next document dumps). In the meantime, I've updated this timeline to help catch you up:
npr.org/2020/09/18/911…
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.