Census war rages ahead of critical data release

Top Democratic lawmakers are calling for the director of the Census Bureau to resign — or be removed by President-elect Joe Biden once he takes office — as former agency heads and advocacy groups decry the Trump administration’s politicization of the decennial count.

The new push comes after a memo from the Commerce Department’s office of inspector general said that Steven Dillingham, who was appointed to lead the agency by President Donald Trump in early 2019 and confirmed by a voice vote in the Senate, was pressuring career employees to produce a technical report on the number of undocumented people in the United States, with two controversial political appointees leading the charge.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) said Dillingham should resign for acting “in an overtly political manner that is unbefitting of his role.”

“He must resign,” said Chu, who is head of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. “If he doesn't resign, then President Biden would have to immediately replace him with a census director who can oversee the completion of the 2020 census.”

Chu said she was starting to reach out to members of the Congressional Black and Hispanic caucuses about a possible formal letter calling on Dillingham to resign.

But other lawmakers are already echoing Chu’s call for Dillingham to step aside.

“Dillingham’s failure to put country over loyalty to the president allowed these transgressions to occur, and he therefore should resign,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said in a statement to POLITICO. “As President Biden begins his presidency, undoing the harm President Trump levied against the census should be at the top of the list, and I will be a ready and willing partner on those efforts.” Shaheen is the ranking member on the appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Commerce Department, the parent agency of the Census Bureau.

The calls for Dillingham’s resignation or ouster come at a critical time for the 2020 decennial census. While data collection was completed last fall, the bureau has yet to produce any of the data. Some Democrats and advocates are worried that the outgoing administration will move to manipulate the data for political gain, either by releasing it without proper quality-control measures before next week’s inauguration or producing other measurements that Republicans could use later in redistricting.

The Trump administration has repeatedly and increasingly sought to meddle in the decennial census throughout his tenure in office. The administration tried to add a question that would ask respondents about their citizenship, a move eventually rebuffed by the Supreme Court in July 2019. Failing that, the Trump issued a memorandum a year later that sought to exclude undocumented immigrants from the apportionment count, which determines how many congressional districts and electoral votes each state will have for the next decade. In December, the Supreme Court punted on ruling on a challenge to the memorandum, saying it was not ripe for review.

The OIG memo said that “several whistleblowers” contacted the Office of Inspector General about the push for the report, which is separate from the president’s memorandum. “One senior Bureau employee went as far to say that this work is statistically indefensible,” the memo read. “Bureau whistleblowers believe this report is being rushed without legitimate reason and will result in an inferior Bureau product.”

NPR reported on Wednesday that the bureau halted work trying to produce the data for Trump’s memorandum, a separate effort to the one relayed in the OIG memo. In a letter from Dillingham on Wednesday afternoon, he said that following the OIG memo, he informed Bureau staff “that those involved should ‘stand down’ and discontinue their data reviews.”

The Census Bureau did not answer a series of questions — including if Dillingham would resign or if he had talked to the transition team — other than to point to his letter in response to the OIG memo. The Biden team did not comment specifically about Dillingham’s tenure.

"The Trump administration's politicization of the census was damaging to our democracy,” a Biden transition aide said. “The Biden-Harris administration will get to work immediately rectifying the actions of the previous administration and ensuring that every American counts regardless of immigration status."

“I believe that Dillingham has betrayed the mission of the Census Bureau,” Arturo Vargas, the CEO of NALEO Education Fund, said. “I think he has lost the trust and confidence of the professional staff at the Census Bureau and is no longer able to lead the agency.” Vargas, who also co-chairs the census task force for The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said that if Dillingham does not resign, the Biden administration should remove him.

Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, joined Chu and Vargas in calling for Dillingham’s “immediate resignation,” saying the director conducted the count unfairly and is “unfit to serve.”

“The Trump Administration’s failed attempts to change the Census would have harmed Hispanic families and were no more than a politically-motivated attack on immigrant communities,” Ruiz said in a statement to POLITICO. “Should he remain in the position after January 20th, President Biden should move forward in removing Dillingham and appointing someone who is committed to upholding the Constitution and giving an accurate count of all persons in the United States."

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said Dillingham demonstrated he was willing to carry out a “xenophobic campaign to manipulate the Census,” despite congressional and constitutional mandates to count everyone.

“He has disqualified himself and must resign or be removed,” Connolly said in an emailed statement to POLITICO.

Dillingham’s tenure does not end until Dec. 31 of this year.

Former heads of the Census Bureau were also critical of both the Trump administration’s overseeing of the decennial count, and of Dillingham specifically, in light of the OIG memo.

“It's very disappointing that the head of a statistical agency would act in such a fashion,” John Thompson, who was the director of the Census Bureau from 2013 through 2017, said in an interview. “He's not acting like the head of a statistical agency if [the OIG memo is] true, and [the Biden administration] would probably have every right to take action about that.”

Former bureau chiefs also said the agency has been under immense political pressure to deliver apportionment data before Trump leaves office next week. Apportionment data was due by the end of 2020, but the pandemic wreaked havoc on the agency’s schedule.

“I do know that the Census Bureau officials were down in the White House often, over the last two-[to]-three week period, under intense pressure to figure out some way to give them the apportionment numbers before they have to turn over the White House,” Kenneth Prewitt, who was the head of the Census Bureau from 1998-2001, said in an interview.

The Census Bureau initially pleaded with Congress to extend deadlines for the count for 120 days. But Congress never granted the extension, and in early August of 2020, the Bureau officially announced it was reversing its request for an extension and would attempt to deliver apportionment data by the end of the year.

Experts both inside and outside the agency feared that it was a politically motivated attempt by the Trump administration to deliver apportionment data skewed to benefit Republicans.

During a court hearing for a case led by advocacy organizations and some local governments earlier this week, Department of Justice attorneys said that apportionment data would likely not be delivered until March at the earliest. The Census Bureau has been reticent to publicly give a timeline for when data could be delivered, outside of the courtroom.

There has been some residual concern that the bureau could attempt to rush out apportionment data by the end of Trump’s presidency, but most advocates said the Department of Justice’s recent statements in court adds some level of confidence to the data being delivered well after Biden takes office.

“You know, nothing this administration would do would surprise me, I don't think. But if they don't have it, they don't have it,” Thompson, the former bureau director, said. “I would hope the Justice Department would not be misleading the court.”

Biden and his team have said little about the census since the election. The president-elect issued a statement following the Supreme Court hearing on Trump’s memorandum, in which he stated his opposition to excluding specific groups of people from the count. (Historically, unauthorized immigrants are included in the count.) “Congress must give the experts at the Census the time to make sure everyone gets counted accurately,” Biden added.

Tyler Pager contributed to this report.