Republicans on the House Oversight Committee accused the Biden administration of political interference with the US Census to change the outcome of the population count in ways more favorable to Democrats.
“Given the extra time it took to complete the 2020 Census—including not meeting the statutory deadlines by months—we have questions about the methodology and the role the Biden White House may have played in releasing these numbers,” they wrote in a letter Friday to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, “especially as the results differ from evaluation estimates released mere months ago in ways that benefit blue states over red states.”
The letter was signed by Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the ranking GOP member of the Oversight committee, and 16 others, including high-profile Reps. Jody Hice of Georgia; Jim Jordan of Ohio; and Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, both of Arizona.
Raimondo is the former governor of Rhode Island—one of the states originally projected to lose a seat until Biden administration “revisions” softened the blow considerably.
According to a watchdog group, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, the original projections for the census reapportionment had New York losing two seats, Rhode Island losing a seat, and Illinois perhaps losing two seats.
Instead, New York and Illinois only lost one, and Rhode Island lost no seat.
Meanwhile, Texas was expected to gain three seats, Florida two seats and Arizona one seat. Instead, Texas gained only two seats, Florida one, and Arizona none.
“This trend calls into question whether there was any political interference with the apportionment results released by the Census Bureau,” the congressmen wrote.
They said that after reaching out to the Census Bureau, GOP staffers were, bizarrely, referred to the White House.
“Yet the statute is clear: it is the Secretary of Commerce who reports the apportionment count to the President, not the other way around,” they noted in the letter.
“Referring our staff’s questions to the White House about the results produced by the Census Bureau is entirely inappropriate, and raises questions about the level of White House involvement in the process,” they added.
The newfound spirit of cooperation between the Census Bureau and the White House marks a dramatic about-face from last December when, after having slow-walked the completion of the census and delayed statutorily mandated deadlines, census officials declared that they would not comply with directives issued by then-President Donald Trump.
Disingenuous Democrats had previously accused the Census Bureau of colluding with the Trump administration.
“The White House involvement is surprising, since Democrats including [Oversight] Chairwoman [Carolyn] Maloney previously accused the Trump White House of ‘scheming about how to rig the process for political gain,'” the GOP letter noted.
“However, during transcribed interviews with senior Census officials in August 2020, none of the officials indicated that they had any contact with the Trump White House, and one official explicitly denied having any conversations with the White House,” they said.
Despite the obvious imbalance in political gamesmanship involving the deep-state bureaucratic interference in the census, some Democrats were continuing to fuss about what they claimed was an unfair outcome.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo—who was directly responsible for the deaths of some 15,000 nursing home residents in his state—complained that the seat New York had lost came down to only a few dozen residents.
He accused the Trump administration for promoting xenophobia and deterring illegal immigrants in his sanctuary state from participating due to concerns that federal immigration law might be enforced if they did.
“Even as President Trump sought to ensure the accuracy of the 2020 Census apportionment results by excluding illegal aliens from the apportionment count, President Biden reversed course, deciding to dilute American citizens’ representational interests by rescinding this commonsense measure,” said the GOP letter.
