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Hansi Lo Wang Profile picture
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12 Jan, 9 tweets, 6 min read
BREAKING: Census Bureau's watchdog @CommerceOIG says whistleblowers reported that the bureau's director, a Trump appointee, wants a data report about noncitizens, including unauthorized immigrants, produced by Jan. 15, calling it "a number one priority"
oig.doc.gov/OIGPublication…
@CommerceOIG 2. @CommerceOIG says Census Bureau's career officials are concerned "incomplete data could be misinterpreted, misused, or otherwise tarnish" bureau’s reputation." Whistleblowers told OIG they haven't had "sufficient time" to run quality checks and aren't sure about data accuracy.
@CommerceOIG 3. @CommerceOIG says Jan. 15 deadline allegedly set by Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham "may no longer be in effect." OIG says Dillingham "inquired into a financial reward for speed on this directive."

I've reached out to Census Bureau's public info office for comment.
@CommerceOIG 4. @CommerceOIG wants written responses from Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham by "close of business" on Jan. 14 and says it may interview Dillingham under oath after reviewing the responses:
@CommerceOIG 5. This report that @CommerceOIG says Dillingham has requested is related to the executive order Trump issued after courts blocked his admin from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The order directs the compiling of government records:
npr.org/2020/05/20/855…
@CommerceOIG 6. With no citizenship question on the 2020 census forms, the Trump administration has been banking on creating data about noncitizens, including unauthorized immigrants, by matching these government records.
@CommerceOIG 7. Trump admin could theoretically attempt to use data created about unauthorized immigrants for Trump's presidential memo from July about excluding unauthorized immigrants from apportionment counts. Timing, though, is making that practically difficult:
@CommerceOIG 8. From the executive order Trump released back in 2019: "Accurate and complete data on the illegal alien population would be useful for the Federal Government in evaluating many policy proposals," including for enforcing immigration laws
@CommerceOIG 9. Here's my write-up on the latest controversy at the Census Bureau:
npr.org/2021/01/12/956…

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More from @hansilowang

Hansi Lo Wang Profile picture
13 Jan
EXCLUSIVE: The Census Bureau has stopped trying to produce a count of unauthorized immigrants that President Trump requested to alter the census numbers used for reallocating congressional seats & Electoral College votes among the states, @NPR has learned
npr.org/2021/01/13/956…
@NPR 2. Senior career officials at the bureau instructed the internal team assigned to carry out Trump's presidential memo to cease their work immediately on Tuesday night, according to a bureau employee who spoke to @NPR on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
@NPR 3. The move by civil servants effectively ends the bureau's participation in Trump's bid to make an unprecedented change to who is counted in the 2020 census apportionment counts, which according to the 14th Amendment, must include the "whole number of persons in each state."
Read 6 tweets
Hansi Lo Wang Profile picture
13 Jan
Whistleblowers at the Census Bureau told the @CommerceOIG that Director Steven Dillingham, a Trump appointee, is trying to rush out a data report about noncitizens that would be "statistically indefensible" and could "tarnish" the bureau's reputation.
npr.org/2021/01/12/956…
@CommerceOIG 2. It's been three hours since @CommerceOIG released its memo that revealed Dillingham's directive to make producing a data report on noncitizens a "number one priority," and the @uscensusbureau's public information office has not yet responded to my questions.
@CommerceOIG @uscensusbureau 3. My earlier thread breaking down the @CommerceOIG memo:
Read 4 tweets
Hansi Lo Wang Profile picture
12 Jan
NEW: Census Bureau says no 2020 census data have been compromised or lost, but its internal watchdog @CommerceOIG finds that "fundamental security safeguards" for IT systems weren't in place before the bureau began collecting online responses in March 2020
oig.doc.gov/OIGPublication… We found that fundamental security safeguards were not in plThe Bureau asserted that “there have been no incidents or
@CommerceOIG 2. The @CommerceOIG says: "Our initial findings were observed during 2020 Census preparations before the internet self-response was conducted, which allowed the Bureau to implement corrective actions to address some of the issues we identified during our fieldwork."
@CommerceOIG 3. @CommerceOIG: "capabilities responsible for file level encryption, data loss prevention (DLP), & database vulnerability scanning were not operating as intended to protect sensitive Title 13 data" collected for the census test run in Rhode Island & address canvassing in 2019.
Read 4 tweets
Hansi Lo Wang Profile picture
11 Jan
BREAKING: The expected release date for the 1st set of 2020 results has been pushed back further, now March 6, DOJ attorney John Coghlan tells a federal judge during a court conference. The Census Bureau's working "diligently" to fix irregularities in census records, Coghlan says
2. The Census Bureau has not uncovered any additional "anomalies" in the census records since those Coghlan disclosed on Jan. 4 to U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh for the National Urban League-led lawsuit over the Trump administration's census schedule changes.
3. The 1st set of census results, again, are the new state population counts that are used to determine each state's share of congressional seats and Electoral College votes for the next 10 years. The 2nd set of results are redistricting data. Timing for that release is still TBD
Read 11 tweets
Hansi Lo Wang Profile picture
10 Jan
President Trump is expected to miss this census deadline under Title 2 of the U.S. Code today as the Census Bureau continues trying to fix irregularities found in the census records to make sure they're accurate before census results are released:
law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/… (a) On the first day, or within one week thereafter, of the
2. As I reported last week, the release of the first set of 2020 census results (state population counts) used to determine each state's share of votes in the House and the Electoral College for the next decade is not expected until Feb. 9 or later:
npr.org/2021/01/04/953…
3. The Census Bureau's associate director for the 2020 census said in a court filing last week that the bureau's "committed to fixing all identified anomalies & to producing complete & accurate census results as close to the statutory deadline as possible"
Read 7 tweets
Hansi Lo Wang Profile picture
9 Jan
The census is likely to be one of the most urgent priorities for the next commerce secretary. But Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo didn't make a single reference to it during her first speech since being named as Biden's intended nominee.

My updated story:
npr.org/sections/biden…
2. Commerce Dept's mission is "to help spur good-paying jobs...empower entrepreneurs to innovate & grow...come together with working families & American businesses to create new opportunities," Raimondo said w no mention of dept's bread & butter — survey data & weather forecasts
3. If confirmed, Raimondo would inherit the supervision of a census that's been upended by COVID-19 and last-minute changes by Trump officials, which have raised a lot of questions about the data's accuracy and public perception of the Census Bureau as a trusted institution.
Read 5 tweets

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