Experts independently resurrect Census Bureau advisory committee axed by Trump administration

A U S Census Bureau advisory committee made up of scientific experts that was axed by the Trump administration earlier this year is resurrecting itself and meeting Thursday with no official blessing or formal ties to the statistical agency The reconstitution of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee rechristened with an Independent in front of its name is a defiant gesture by the research region against the Trump administration s elimination last winter of three advisory committees made up of outside experts from private industry and academia Unlike in past meetings no Census Bureau staffers will be involved directly or indirectly during Thursday s conference Will our scientific advice still find an ear at the Census Bureau I do not know disclosed University of North Carolina sociologist Barbara Entwisle who chairs the committee However it is a certainty that our recommendations will have no effect at all if we do not provide them The decision to get the committee members back together is the latest effort by statisticians demographers and other researchers to challenge statistical-system changes that they see as worrisome since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January for a second term Since then information sets related to gender sexual orientation robustness conditions change and diversity have disappeared from federal websites and workers and contractors who had been information guardians at statistical agencies either have departed or been forced out by efforts to shrink the federal regime Last month Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after the agency made downward revisions to the number of jobs created in the spring Just last week the Census Bureau commented it was not able to renew a contract that maintained a website for an online society of users for its largest survey of American life And last month Trump instructed the Commerce Department to have the Census Bureau start work on a new census that would exclude immigrants who are in the United States illegally from the head count which determines political power and federal spending The th Amendment says that the whole number of persons in each state are to be counted for the once-a-decade census and any changes to how the census is conducted requires congressional approval During a confirmation hearing on Wednesday Joyce Meyer who has been nominated to be an under secretary of the Commerce Department which oversees the Census Bureau dodged a direct question about whether Trump should be able to conduct a new census without Congress changing the law but disclosed she would comply with the law Besides the Census Scientific Advisory Committee the U S Commerce Department last winter killed the Census Advisory Committee which advised on the upcoming census and the National Advisory Committee which offered insight on how to accurately count and collect content from racial ethnic and other communities At the time U S Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick revealed the committees purposes have been fulfilled A coalition of civil rights groups were dismayed by the committees elimination describing them in a letter to Lutnick as a major setback for the bureau as it prepared for the census and modernized the work of records collection Eliminating these committees threatens the bureau s ability to collect accurate comprehensive demographic and economic facts they commented in the May letter sent by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Before the committees were eliminated the Census Bureau had appointed their members The agency s top leaders attended the committees biannual meetings and received their recommendations Members of the advisory committees worked for free except for progress expenses and lodging for meetings In a report the Census Bureau reported Wednesday that the agency gets outside input through a rulemaking process for the federal establishment that invites the citizens to make comments When inquired if the Census Advisory Committee might follow the path of the reconstituted scientific panel Arturo Vargas its former chairman revealed in an email We are still discussing options and determining how best to use the scant materials to have the bulk impact and exploring how another independent advisory committee is valued added Allison Plyer a past chair of the scientific advisory committee explained that the Census Bureau has invariably benefited from the strategic advise of committee members who are experts in their fields They don t have that now reported Plyer chief demographer at The Content Center in New Orleans An outside perspective is incredibly key Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky mikeysid bsky social Source