US:Census End Remains Uncertain After Judge Calls New Schedule 'A Violation'

A day after the Census Bureau fired off a one-sentence tweet announcing Oct. 5 as its new target date for ending all efforts to tally the country's residents, a federal judge said she thinks the new schedule is a violation of her court order. The Oct. 5 date is doing exactly what I enjoined the defendants from doing.

Internal emails and other documents the Trump administration released Tuesday under the judge's order show that Ross picked the Oct. 5 date after career officials at the Census Bureau presented him with two options either end field operations on Oct. 5 to meet the Dec. 31 reporting deadline, or continue counting past Oct. 5 and forgo meeting that deadline but further "the goal of a complete and accurate 2020 Census," as the bureau's deputy director, Ron Jarmin, put it.

Top career officials at the bureau, however, have publicly said that the agency can no longer meet that reporting deadline due to delays caused by covid-19.

Last week, Koh issued a preliminary injunction order that prohibits the bureau and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the bureau, from implementing Dec. 31 as a deadline for getting new state population counts to the president