AP (“Census Bureau to miss deadline, jeopardizing Trump plan“):
The Census Bureau will miss a year-end deadline for handing in numbers used for divvying up congressional seats, a delay that could undermine President Donald Trump’s efforts to exclude people in the country illegally from the count if the figures aren’t submitted before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
The Census Bureau plans to deliver a population count of each state in early 2021, as close to the missed deadline as possible, the statistical agency said in a statement late Wednesday.
“As issues that could affect the accuracy of the data are detected, they are corrected,” the statement said. “The schedule for reporting this data is not static. Projected dates are fluid.”
It will be the first time that the Dec. 31 target date is missed since the deadline was implemented more than four decades ago by Congress.
Internal documents obtained earlier this month by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform show that Census Bureau officials don’t expect the apportionment numbers to be ready until days after Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20.
Once in office, Biden could rescind Trump’s presidential memorandum directing the Census Bureau to exclude people in the country illegally from numbers used for divvying up congressional seats among the states. An influential GOP adviser had advocated excluding them from the apportionment process in order to favor Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.
“The delay suggests that the census bureau needs more time to ensure the accuracy of census numbers for all states,” said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer who specializes in census issues.
By law the Commerce Department must present the president by year’s end with population figures from the 2020 census, data then used to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets. The president then is required to submit the numbers to Congress in early January. The Commerce Department oversees the Census Bureau, which conducts the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident.
However, there are no penalties for missing the deadline.
Two not mutually exclusive possibilities occur to me.
First, the combination of a global pandemic whose like hasn’t been seen in a century and a series of court battles over the count legitimately delayed the process, making achievement of the deadline more challenging than usual. Indeed, the most recent Supreme Court ruling was only two months ago.
Second, the career professionals at the Census Bureau—the Deep State, if you prefer—intentionally flouted the law precisely to ensure President Biden, not President Trump, would be in office at the critical time. Not because they’re Democratic Party operatives but because they see their duty as completing a count of all residents of the country, as required by the Constitution.
Interestingly, the entire basis of the aforementioned SCOTUS ruling was that the extended count (it was originally scheduled to end July 31 but COVID) needed to stop to meet the 31 December deadline, despite Congress having been on the precipice of granting an extension through the end of April until Trump intervened. Even though the Bureau had already certified that it would not be able to meet the deadline, regardless.
