In another action that other President’s from both party probably haven’t done…..
President Trump has put two of his political people in the Census Bureau as it runs the 2020 survey that will be the basis of the new US House of Representatives districts …
This has raised eyebrows in the agency and in other places….
Donald Trump does have aversion to telling the truth and has NO problem with having his minions change the facts to fit their bosses view of reality….
We can only hope that in 6 months a new Bide admin will work hard to undo the Trump attempts to change reality…
The Census questionnaires contain information on a LOT of people that is supposed to be NOT shared outside the bureau….
The White House and Commerce Department forced the Census Bureau to take two new political appointees last week whose unexpected arrival has deepened fears at the agency that the 2020 census will be politicized, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Last Monday, Commerce deputy secretary Karen Dunn Kelley informed Census Bureau director Steven Dillingham and his career deputy, Ron Jarmin, that the two new appointees, Commerce aides Nathaniel T. Cogley and Adam Korzeniewski, had been installed in senior roles at the Census Bureau — a move that blindsided both of them, according to a Census Bureau official.
Cogley, a frequent radio commentator who received a Ph.D. in political science from Yale in 2013 and was the head of the department of government, legal studies and philosophy at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, will be deputy director for policy. Korzeniewski, now a senior adviser for Cogley, once worked as a Republican political consultant for the failed Staten Island congressional run of Joey Saladino, a Trumpy young YouTube star known as “Joey Salads.”
On Tuesday, Dillingham issued a statement announcing that Cogley and Korzeniewski were joining the agency. He praised Cogley’s “distinguished academic background” and said that Korzeniewski had “exemplary military and public service experience, including prior Census Bureau fieldwork.” He also said that “the support of Dr. Cogley and Mr. Korzeniewski will help the Census Bureau achieve a complete and accurate 2020 Census and study future improvements.”
But inside the Census Bureau, a technocratic agency long accustomed to carrying out its work without political meddling, the hires were viewed with suspicion. Not only had they occurred while the 2020 census was already well underway, officials didn’t view them as particularly qualified for their new positions. The fact that the White House had installed them only raised further alarms.
“No one has expressed any support for the decision” at the bureau for the decision to hire the two new appointees, according to the Census Bureau official. “There’s great concern.”
“They basically swallowed hard,” a person close to the bureau said. “They have no choice, and they must do it.”….
Anyone who’s ever worked for the Census (as I did in 1980) knows how seriously everyone there takes impartiality and non-partisanship (as well as privacy and confidentiality).
Local officials do have the right, after a preliminary count of their jurisdictions has been announced, to ask for a recanvass to see if anyone’s been missed. Berkeley, Calif., did so in 1980 and succeeded in reaching the right side (i.e. upper side) of 100,000.
But the emphasis is on thoroughness and penetration on an impartial basis. It’s often hardest (for technical reasons) to count the whiter and most affluent, as well as the minority and poorer, parts of the population, and I did both.
Re: “We can only hope that in 6 months a new Bide admin will work hard to undo the Trump attempts to change reality…”
… one could hope, but the damage if any will be done. The states and Congress need to have the figures for each state by the end of 2020, and those numbers will be used to apportion Representatives (and thus Electoral Votes) among the several states, and to draw Congressional District lines within each state.
This Congress will come back in December, a month before any new (or old) President is inaugurated.
So, while a President Biden could if elected address the Trumpification of the Census, he couldn’t change the numbers collected under Trump.