Census Bureau officials said that the agency hopes to deliver state population totals to the commerce secretary by April 30, the original date the bureau set after the count was delayed because of the coronavirus.
The announcement comes after a months-long battle over President Donald Trump’s attempt to exclude undocumented immigrants from state population data, which is used to calculate how many House seats each state gets for the next 10 years. That effort effectively ended earlier this month when U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh approved a three-week stay on the release of state population totals, pushing it back until after Trump left office.
Wynn Coggins is the acting head of the Commerce Department, but President Biden has tapped Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo (D) as his nominee to lead the agency. If confirmed, she will receive the state population counts and deliver the numbers to the president. At her confirmation hearing Tuesday, she said in her first public comments on the census that she planned to rely on the expertise of Census Bureau staff members and would allow more time for processing if they deemed it necessary.
