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Hansi Lo Wang

28 Dec, 10 tweets, 3 min read

NEW: As expected, the Supreme Court has overturned lower court rulings out of California & Maryland that had blocked Trump's census apportionment memo. The liberal justices dissent, as they did for the SCOTUS ruling in the NY-based case earlier this month:
supremecourt.gov/orders/courtor…

2. What this means is that the Supreme Court has further cleared the path for President Trump to try to exclude unauthorized immigrants from census numbers that the Constitution says must include the "whole number of persons in each state." But time is running out...

3. Trump can try to alter the census numbers used for reallocating congressional seats and Electoral College votes only *if* he gets control of those numbers before his term ends on Jan. 20, and right now, that is still a big if because...

4. ...we still don't know if/when the Census Bureau can produce state population counts from the 2020 census & a state-by-state count of unauthorized immigrants by Jan. 20. The bureau's schedule has been set back by irregularities in census records that require more time to fix.

5. Those state population counts are legally due to the president this Thursday, Dec. 31, the 1st step in a handoff process for apportionment numbers that the House clerk certifies.) But for months, the Census Bureau's been on track to miss that deadline:
npr.org/2020/12/05/943…

6. That means the process for reapportioning congressional seats may end up taking place during the administration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has condemned Trump's plan to exclude unauthorized immigrants from apportionment counts and said "in America, everyone counts."

7. I'll be watching this closely through Jan. 20 -- and so are the 23 states, plus immigrant rights organizations and other groups, that initially sued the Trump administration and are preparing to sue again if Trump tries to alter these census numbers before leaving office.

8. And at this point, you may be wondering...
npr.org/2020/11/12/933…

9. To be clear, the Supreme Court is overturning the lower court rulings that had blocked Trump's census memo because SCOTUS found that the cases are not ready for courts to review. From the majority opinion in the New York-based case:
supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf…

10. UPDATE: California Attorney General Xavier Becerra — whose office led one of the lawsuits over President Trump's census apportionment memo — responds to today's Supreme Court order by saying that California is "committed to the core principle that everyone counts"

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More from @hansilowang

Hansi Lo Wang

@hansilowang

30 Dec

NEW: 2020 census results won’t be ready by the year-end deadline, a Census Bureau employee tells NPR. The bureau’s working toward Jan. 9 for determining when to begin last steps in producing counts for reallocating House seats and Electoral College votes
npr.org/2020/12/30/951…

2. The Census Bureau employee, who spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation in the workplace, confirms that the bureau is still trying to fix irregularities uncovered in this year's census records and has set Jan. 9 as an internal check-in date.

3. "If we miss Jan. 9, it's hard to envision that we would get apportionment done before inauguration," the bureau employee says.

In other words, if the census results aren't ready until after 1/20, it would be Biden who would get control of the numbers Trump wants to alter.

Read 4 tweets

Hansi Lo Wang

@hansilowang

29 Dec

The legal deadline for the first set of 2020 census results is less than two days away — Dec. 31, according to Section 141(b) of Title 13 of the U.S. Code.

And neither the Census Bureau nor the Justice Department have any answers to these questions:

2. When is the Census Bureau planning to deliver state population counts from the 2020 census to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (who oversees the bureau and is required under Title 13 to report them to the president by Dec. 31)?

3. Is the Census Bureau planning to deliver to the commerce secretary the apportionment calculation of the number of House seats to which each state is entitled at the same time as the delivery of the state population counts from the 2020 census?

Read 7 tweets

Hansi Lo Wang

@hansilowang

18 Dec

BREAKING: The Supreme Court has overturned a lower court ruling on Trump’s census memo, leaving open the possibility for Trump to try to exclude some unauthorized immigrants from a key count that shapes the next Electoral College map
supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf…

@NinaTotenberg

2. Here's my write-up with @NinaTotenberg on what the Supreme Court's ruling in the census case means:
npr.org/2020/12/18/946…

@NinaTotenberg

@NinaTotenberg 3. FWIW, @LeahLitman predicted that the Supreme Court would punt on the census apportionment case after a lower court did the same thing in the D.C.-based lawsuit over Trump's memo because it found the case "not ripe for review"
npr.org/2020/11/26/939…

Read 8 tweets

Hansi Lo Wang

@hansilowang

15 Dec

NEW: The Census Bureau — using government records and not the #2020Census results — estimates that the U.S. population as of April 1 was somewhere within the range of 330.7 million to 335.5 million people

2. The U.S. population may have grown by as much as 8.7% since 2010, according to the Census Bureau's Demographic Analysis estimates based on gov't records.

My write-up on what these estimates mean for the #2020Census results, which are *not* out yet:
npr.org/2020/12/15/946…

3. People who died from COVID-19 before Census Day (April 1) were taken into account when the bureau worked on these estimates, said Eric Jensen, the bureau's senior technical expert for Demographic Analysis.

Read 12 tweets

Hansi Lo Wang

@hansilowang

13 Dec

NEW: The Trump administration has filed an emergency request asking a federal court to reconsider or put a hold on an order for the release of internal #2020Census documents by Dec. 14 in the Nat'l Urban League-led lawsuit over the admin's schedule changes
beta.documentcloud.org/documents/2042…

2. Trump admin signals it may make an emergency request to the Supreme Court to block the lower court's order for the #2020Census document release. Admin says it does not have enough time to fully review and redact the documents the lower court has ordered for release by Dec. 14.

https://twitter.com/hansilowang/status/1337396402851360776

3. It's worth noting that in that lower court ruling, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh noted that the Trump administration has had months to gather many of these documents and that "time is of the essence" now bc evidence gathering for this case ends on Jan. 7

https://twitter.com/hansilowang/status/1337396402851360776

Read 6 tweets

Hansi Lo Wang

@hansilowang

3 Dec

@USGAO

NEW: There are a number of open questions about #2020Census data quality raised in the @USGAO's latest report on the potential impact of COVID-19, plus the Trump administration's last-minute schedule changes that cut short counting and processing time
gao.gov/assets/720/711…

@USGAO

@USGAO 2. COVID-19 forced delay of the count of people experiencing homelessness, which could result in misrepresenting where these populations were living on Census Day (4/1). @USGAO says bureau has not explained how it plans to document how that could impact data products' accuracy.

@USGAO

@USGAO 3. The #2020Census door-knocking in August into early September was conducted under Trump administration pressure to finish counting early using pay bonuses to field workers and other procedures that were not tested beforehand, so how they could affect data quality is unknown.