“The oversight committee will carefully examine the administration’s request, but we need more information than the administration has been willing to provide,” the committee’s chairwoman, Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of New
York, said in a statement.
- Trump defends his response with a campaign-style video and attacks on the news media as Fauci seeks to clarify his remarks.
- As Trump says he “calls the shots,” governors form regional groups to consider when and how to reopen.
- Business leaders and the C.D.C. warn the economy will recover slowly, even as pressure grows to reopen it.
“If the administration is trying to avoid the perception of politicizing the census, preventing the census director from briefing the committee and then excluding him from a call organized by the White House are not encouraging moves.”
The 2020 head count has been mired in controversy since 2017, when the administration tried to amend the census questionnaire to count the number of noncitizens, which was widely seen as an effort to give Republicans a political edge in next year’s redistricting. Many experts also have expressed fears that the administration’s harsh anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric would deter minorities from filling out census forms, leading to an undercount that also would work to Republicans’ benefit.
Census officials have said that response to the census — the first to be conducted largely over the internet — had been meeting expectations. But the bureau already had been forced once to extend the shutdown of field operations that it first announced in March. Efforts to count millions of households in specialized segments of the population — homeless people and those without fixed addresses, such as Native Americans on reservations — have been in limbo, awaiting the bureau’s decision when it would be safe to begin or resume them.
As of Monday, 48.1 percent of households had filled out census forms, with well over a month remaining in the formal period for responding. In the last census in 2010, 66.5 percent of households filled out forms; most of the rest were contacted by an army of door-knockers, called enumerators, who started work after the formal deadline for responding had passed.