One of President Donald Trump’s signature moves… one that led to multiple court battles, including a Supreme Court case… could be about to crumble.
And it’s not because of the legal issues.
It’s all because of a missed deadline.
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The issue is the U.S. Census and the Trump administration’s push to count only legal residents of the country.
That single decision could have huge repercussions across the country… potentially reducing the number of seats in left-leaning regions, which would see their “official” population numbers drop.
But a little-noticed announcement could doom the effort — and the Trump administration is running out of time to fix it.
The Census Bureau missed its Dec. 31 deadline for completing its work and turning it over to the president for the first time since the 1976 law establishing the date took effect.
The delays are due to problems conducting the census amid the pandemic, which in turn have led to problems in the data that the bureau now says it needs more time to correct.
And while the agency initially said it intended to finish before Trump leaves office, a new report finds it likely won’t happen until February at the earliest – when President-elect Joe Biden will be in office, and his administration will have control over the agency.
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And that, in turn, could mean swift action to protect liberal seats in Congress, making it harder for Republicans to regain the majority in the 2022 midterm elections.
“The Census Bureau clearly needs more time to ensure the most accurate state population counts for apportionment possible,” Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former staff director of the House census oversight subcommittee, told the Washington Post. “Even relatively small mistakes in the counting process could affect which states get the final seats in the House, if the bureau doesn’t fix those errors.”
The apportionment determines how many House seats each state gets. States with growing populations can gain seats, while states with shrinking populations may lose them.
That will happen in any case due to normal population shifts.
But the legal residency issue alone would likely put three House seats on the line with California, Florida, and Texas each losing a seat, according to the newspaper’s estimates.
What’s more, those states losing the three seats would have likely allowed Alabama, Minnesota, and Ohio to hold onto seats they seem on the verge of losing during the apportionment process, the newspaper estimated.
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But the process came to a halt after the agency identified at least 15 “anomalies” in the data, impacting some 1 million records.
Roll Call says one issue is the difficulty in conducting the necessary fieldwork.
The Commerce Department says problems with follow-up interviews have led to accuracy issues impacting more than 500,000 records – and as a result, those cases have to be re-checked to ensure accuracy.
The process has also been challenged repeatedly in courts, with the Trump administration sued repeatedly over numerous issues, but especially the move to count only legal residents.
Trump opponents point to language in the Constitution saying the census should be conducted by “counting the whole number of persons in each State,” a phrase they say suggests counting all people – not just legal residents.
However, the Supreme Court in December punted on the issue, saying in a 6-3 ruling that the effort to block the administration’s move to count legal residents was based on “conjecture” rather than actual harms.
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The court did not rule on the merits of the case, meaning opponents could still sue after the effort is completed.
Now, that might be moot.
Biden is known to be hostile toward the attempts to block undocumented residents from the census… so unless something changes and the work is completed by Jan. 20, he’ll likely ensure that it includes the undocumented.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert.