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Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) Profile picture
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6 Nov, 5 tweets, 2 min read
SCOOP: Former President Donald Trump's payroll tax delay last year left a $7 million accounting mess for the Census Bureau, which has been trying to get ~28K former census workers to pay off their debt after giving up trying to collect from ~148K others
npr.org/2021/11/05/104…
2. I deleted this earlier tweet that misstated the number of former 2020 census workers from whom the Census Bureau has decided to stop trying to collect unpaid payroll taxes. That number is 147,619 former workers (not ~178K):
3. The Census Bureau was one of many fed agencies the Trump admin directed last year to stop collecting some employees' share of a payroll tax that helps fund Social Security. Trump said it would get "bigger paychecks for working families.” But it’s also an accounting challenge.
4. Difficulty in reaching former 2020 census workers and getting them to pay their debts has led the bureau to defer collecting some of those Social Security taxes. Here’s what the bureau told me in an email statement: On August 8, 2020, President Trump issued a Presidential MemConsistent with applicable Treasury Department regulations o
5. Some former 2020 census workers have received letter and email reminders about unpaid taxes months after they ended their temporary jobs. The deadline for paying the deferred taxes is Dec. 31, the IRS says (irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n…). "It's kind of a shock seeing that email from the Census

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More from @hansilowang

Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) Profile picture
4 Nov
I asked the office of Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla. — who blocked an attempt to confirm Census Bureau director nominee Robert Santos by unanimous consent in October — why Scott said he's concerned Santos will “politicize" the bureau & not serve "in a fair and unbiased fashion"...
2. So far, Scott's office has not provided any evidence that would suggest Santos would “politicize” the Census Bureau and “not perform his duties in a fair and unbiased fashion."

Instead, Scott's communications director, McKinley Lewis, gave this statement by email: The Census Bureau performs critically important functions to
3. I am waiting for any direct response to this follow-up question:

Does Sen. Rick Scott consider Robert Santos not qualified or competent to serve as Census Bureau director? If so, why?
Read 4 tweets
Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) Profile picture
2 Nov
NEW: The 2020 census likely undercounted people of color at rates higher than those of the last count, an @urbaninstitute study finds. That could translate into inequities in political representation & federal funding across the U.S. for the next 10 years
npr.org/2021/11/02/104…
@urbaninstitute 2. Important to note: This @urbaninstitute study is *not* an analysis of 2020 census results & doesn't show actual over/undercounts. The estimates are based on a *simulated* census & a method for measuring accuracy that's different from the Census Bureau's
urban.org/research/publi…
@urbaninstitute 3. Let's also keep in mind: When people of color are undercounted in the census, it's not just "some" groups who miss out on federal funding and political representation — it's *everyone* living in the local communities and states where there are people of color.
Read 5 tweets
Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) Profile picture
31 Aug
NEW: The Biden administration and the House Oversight and Reform Committee have reached an agreement that could end the almost two-year legal battle over redacted Trump administration documents about the now-blocked census citizenship question
documentcloud.org/documents/2105…
2. House oversight committee members/staff can look at & take notes about docs to prepare a narrower request, but some info will still be redacted.

I wonder why Trump admin emails about the census would also mention unrelated "Department of Justice memoranda from the 1980s"? The priority documents and the additional documents selected
3. Here are the redacted emails about the census that the Trump administration tried so hard to stop the House Oversight and Reform Committee from seeing, sparking this lawsuit:
npr.org/2019/06/14/732…
Read 15 tweets
Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) Profile picture
30 Aug
"It's not they are reluctant to participate...they really don't understand what census does," census field manager Bob Lee tells @theNASEM Committee on Nat'l Statistics' 2020 census panel about challenge of counting one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the U.S., Queens, NY
@theNASEM 2. Many seniors who served as 2020 census workers were "resilient" & did "rise to the occasion" of meeting challenges of door knocking during a pandemic and while using smartphones & other new technology, says former area census office manager Diana Cannon of the Atlanta region.
@theNASEM 3. Explaining how the census guides federal $ to local communities helped convince many resistant households to participate, says Diana Cannon. "They just think it's someone from the government coming to impede upon their privacy and many of them did say, 'I did not know that.' "
Read 4 tweets
Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) Profile picture
22 Aug
The recent media coverage about the white population “declining” or “shrinking” was misleading and maybe even dangerous. @nprviz’s Ruth Talbot and I dug into the new U.S. census data. The actual story is more complicated than what you may have read👇
npr.org/2021/08/22/102…
2. The white population is still the largest racial group in the United States. How its size has changed since the 2010 census depends on how you define "white." How The Size Of The U.S. Wh...
3. For decades in the media (including my past reporting for @NPR), a population the Census Bureau calls "White alone non-Hispanic" has become synonymous with *the* white population.

This narrow definition ignores 2 key aspects about how the census produces race/ethnicity data.
Read 10 tweets
Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) Profile picture
13 Aug
One takeaway from the new U.S. census data: people's racial identities often can't fit neatly into check boxes. @connjie and Ruth Talbot of @nprviz made 2 charts to illustrate why.
npr.org/2021/08/13/101…
@connjie @nprviz 2. Depending on how you slice the 2020 census data, you can get different snapshots of the racial demographics of the United States.

Breakdowns of the racial/ethnic makeup of the U.S. often don't reflect the multiracial population, which has grown by 276% since the 2010 census.
@connjie @nprviz 3. Since 2000, participants have been able to check off more than one box when answering the census race question.

But breakdowns of the US racial/ethnic makeup often focus on racial groups made up of people who marked only one box w multiracial people sometimes lumped together.
Read 9 tweets

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