The Commerce Department, parent agency of the U.S. Census Bureau, quietly rewrote its scientific integrity policy in an unannounced edit dated August 19 — one day after the Bureau released a disputed, unattributed report claiming evidence of noncitizen voting. The revision deleted language that had explicitly listed "protection from inappropriate influence" as a hallmark of scientific integrity, and dropped a ban on suppressing, delaying or altering findings "for political purposes."

The original policy dated to January 2025, adopted just before President Trump's second inauguration. Reporting from NPR, which first broke both the report and the policy-change stories, found the noncitizen-voting report itself was compiled by a team with ties to the America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded by officials from Trump's first administration — not by career Census Bureau staff.

"A Major Change"

Former officials who helped build the Bureau's integrity safeguards say the timing is impossible to ignore. Nancy Potok, a former Census Bureau deputy director, called the revision "a major change that eliminates the guardrails against political interference." Robert Santos, who led the Bureau under the Biden administration, said it's "entirely possible this was done to reconcile the Department of Commerce and the administration's own actions" after the Bureau published what he described as "an external partisan document," according to OPB's reporting.

IT LEAVES LOTS OF OPPORTUNITIES TO PUT PRESSURE ON STAFF

That warning, from Beth Jarosz, vice president of the Association of Public Data Users, points to the stakes ahead: the Bureau is now beginning preparations for the 2030 census, which will reallocate congressional seats and federal funding for the following decade. Trump has repeatedly cited the noncitizen-voting report to renew unproven claims of illegal voting in U.S. elections.

The America First Policy Institute defended the analysts behind the report, saying in a statement that "maximizing transparency is a critical step to restoring confidence in our elections," according to KPBS.

What's Next

Data-integrity watchdogs and former Bureau officials say they will be watching closely for any further changes to Census methodology ahead of the 2030 count. No congressional hearing on the policy change has been scheduled as of publication, though advocacy groups are pressing for oversight given the census's outsized influence on political representation and federal funding formulas.