Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sent letters Wednesday to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and other Trump administration officials demanding an explanation for why the department quietly stripped language protecting Census Bureau research from political interference out of its scientific-integrity policy, according to NPR, whose reporting on the change prompted the inquiry.
The Commerce Department revised the policy on Aug. 19, removing "protection from inappropriate influence" from the list of principles the document identifies as hallmarks of scientific integrity. The revision came one day after the Census Bureau published an unusual research document, produced by a team with ties to the America First Policy Institute, making claims about noncitizen voting that outside experts said fell below the bureau's normal research standards.
You owe the public a clear explanation of why the Department removed this language and how it arrived at this decision.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick
Part of a broader pattern, senator says
Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, tied the policy change to a string of other moves she said threaten the reliability of federal demographic and economic data. In June, the administration banned a decades-old statistical privacy technique the bureau had long used to protect respondents' identities, a change that has delayed survey releases. This month, officials have proposed excluding certain noncitizen residents from the population count used to apportion congressional seats, a departure from the Constitution's requirement, under the 14th Amendment, to count the "whole number of persons" in each state. Warren's letter also flagged bureau plans that would, for the first time, stop producing detailed data on race and ethnicity.
Commerce Department and White House budget office spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the policy change, according to NPR's reporting. The episode is the latest flashpoint over the independence of federal statistical agencies ahead of the 2030 census cycle, with Democrats and some former bureau officials warning that political pressure on core demographic data could ripple through everything from congressional redistricting to the allocation of federal funding.
Warren's letters request a response detailing who ordered the change, when the decision was made and whether any political appointees were involved in reviewing the AFPI-linked document before its release. No deadline for a response had been set as of Wednesday.
