Thread by @hansilowang

SCOOP: The Trump administration has added its 4th political appointee in 3 months to the Census Bureau — Earl “Trey” Mayfield, newly appointed counselor to the bureau’s director
npr.org/2020/09/30/916…

2. Here's the statement about Trey Mayfield I received from the Census Bureau's chief spokesperson Michael Cook:

3. The Census Bureau has not answered NPR's question about why Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham needs a dedicated attorney given that lawyers at the Commerce Department, which oversees the bureau, provide legal services for the bureau.

4. Trey Mayfield, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Utah, practices with the law firm Juris Day, which was originally co-founded by Ken Cuccinelli, whose appointment to the Department of Homeland Security by the Trump administration has been declared unlawful by a federal judge

5. "I'm not authorized to speak to the press," Mayfield told me when reached by phone earlier today, referring questions to the bureau's associate director for communications, Ali Ahmad, another Trump appointee.

6. The Census Bureau is largely run by career civil servants.

Since late June, however, the Trump administration has been installing one appointee after another without any past bureau experience or obvious qualifications for joining the agency's highest ranks.

7. Two deputy director roles have been created, including one for Nathaniel Cogley, a political science professor. Cogley's adviser, Adam Korzeniewski, is a former paid political consultant to a YouTube personality known for racist pranks.
npr.org/2020/06/23/882…

8. Benjamin Overholt — a statistician who previously worked for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Justice — was recently appointed as a new deputy director for data:
npr.org/2020/08/17/903…

9. Professional associations of statisticians, economists & demographers have objected to the lack of justification for creating top-level roles at the bureau in the final months of the #2020Census as bureau prepares to release data with 10 years' worth of implication for the US.