ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

Specifically, the memo circulated by Census officials--compiled as part of a plan to approach Trump's Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross (who oversaw the Census)--complains that there had been an "unusually high degree of engagement in technical matters, which is unprecedented." Or, put more simply, administration officials were meddling in the most fundamental inner workings of a complex and finely tuned process in ways that had never been seen before. Political appointees tried to influence the way the Census Bureau counted people, processed the data, avoided disclosing private information, counted citizens, and calculated undocumented populations. Basically everything the Census Bureau undertakes. 

The Brennan Center says that other documents show that a plan was in place to have Ross call GOP state governors and have them provide their own data to help determine how to count immigrant populations (while not making a similar effort with Democratic governors). Documents also show that new political appointees joined the Census as late as August 2020 as the election loomed, and the new officials were apparently solely interested in affecting how citizenship data was calculated.

Other documents show that when the administration ordered the Census to curtail the count and use new methodologies to fill in the details, Census officials argued back, pointing out the statistical and legal shortcomings of the Trump-proposed methods. The documents show that while Trump political appointees at the Bureau did not seem to be interested in career officials' concerns about the process, there was direct contact between Ross and the executive director of an anti-immigration group and Commerce Department employees talking with employees of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank.

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