January 19 According to The Hill, Steven Dillingham, the director of the U.S. Census Bureau, will resign, effective January 20.
The decision came after Dillingham faced scrutiny from Democrats and other critics who claimed that Dillingham succumbed to the Trump administration’s politicization of the census.
The U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General released a memorandum last week, saying whistleblowers said that Trump-appointed officials were putting pressure on professional officials to count the number of illegal immigrants, regardless of the quality of reports, before Trump left office on January 15.
In a statement issued on the 15th, House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Carolyn Maloney called for Dillingham’s resignation, saying she no longer believes that “Dillingham can lead the Census Bureau to conduct a fair, accurate and complete 2020 census as required by the Constitution”.
Maloney urged President-elect Biden to remove Dillingham if he did not resign.
“There is no indication that the requested data violates any law or regulation,” Dillingham said in a statement on the 18th.
Dillingham left office at this time, nearly one year before the end of his statutory term.
In July 2020, Trump instructed the U.S. Census Bureau to count the number of illegal immigrants when calculating the total population of each state and exclude them from the total population.
At least 24 states in the United States filed a lawsuit, saying that Trump’s policies violated the Constitution and the Census Act.
