CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Trump Administration’s Catastrophic Census Proposal

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The Trump administration recently announced significant changes to the 2026 Operational Test for the 2030 Census. If implemented, the changes would undermine the utility of what should be a broad, multi-site rehearsal of census operations, potentially compromising the validity of the 2030 Census results. The changes transform the test from a safeguard into a source of additional risk and uncertainty.

The sweeping changes to the Operational Test include a reduction in the number of test sites from six to two; the replacement of the decennial short form with the much longer American Community Survey (ACS) questionnaire, with questions reordered so that a question on citizenship appears earlier; and a pilot to evaluate the use of United States Postal Service (USPS) employees in place of trained Census Bureau enumerators. Any one of these changes would compromise the scientific validity of the exercise. Taken together, they threaten to thoroughly degrade the test’s utility as a planning tool to inform preparations for 2030.

Operational tests are designed to evaluate the mechanics of conducting a nationwide census — canvassing, mailings, online response systems, field operations, enumerator hiring and training, outreach strategies, and quality control procedures. Testing helps identify weaknesses and improve accuracy ahead of the constitutionally mandated decennial census. The original design of the 2026 test reflected that mission. It included six geographically and demographically diverse sites: Colorado Springs, CO; Huntsville, AL; Spartanburg, SC; Western North Carolina; Western Texas; and tribal lands in Arizona. These locations were selected after years of research to stress-test census operations in environments that are historically difficult to count, including rural communities, tribal lands, military installations, and regions with limited cell phone service and few traditional mailing addresses.

The revised plan eliminates four of those six test sites, leaving only Huntsville and Spartanburg. This reduces the expected respondent pool from 631,850 to just 154,600. It also sharply reduces the diversity and representativeness of the subject pool. The census has a long history of undercounting specific populations, including people with disabilities, American........

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