Experts have resurrected the Census Bureau's advisory committee, reviving the panel with an 'Independent' label and meeting Thursday with no official blessing or formal ties to the statistical agency. The reconstitution follows the Trump administration's winter decision to disband three outside expert committees that advised on the bureau's operations and the 2030 census.
Barbara Entwisle, a University of North Carolina sociologist who chairs the new Independent Census Scientific Advisory Committee, said the group plans to press ahead despite the lack of a formal link to the Census Bureau. "Will our scientific advice still find an ear at the Census Bureau? I do not know," Entwisle said. "However, it is a certainty that our recommendations will have no effect at all if we do not provide them."
The agency’s action in January eliminated three committees that included outside experts from academia and private industry. The removals were part of broader efforts by the administration to shrink the federal workforce and restructure how agencies collect and oversee data. Since then, researchers have warned about changes to data sets on gender, sexuality, health, climate and diversity disappearing from federal websites, and about staff and contractors who safeguarded statistical integrity leaving or being ousted.
Last month, President Trump ousted the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after the agency revised job-creation figures downward for the spring. And the Census Bureau said it was not able to renew a contract for an online community of users for its largest survey. In a broader domestic agenda, Trump also directed the Commerce Department to have the Census Bureau begin work on a new census that would exclude illegal immigrants from the head count, a move that would require changes to the Constitution and congressional approval. The 14th Amendment says that "the whole number of persons in each state" are to be counted for the once-a-decade census, and any changes to how the census is conducted requires congressional action.
During a confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Joyce Meyer, nominated to be under secretary of the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, dodged a direct question about whether Trump should be able to conduct a new census without Congress changing the law, but said she would comply with the law.
Beyond the Independent Census Scientific Advisory Committee, the Commerce Department last winter killed two other advisory bodies: the Census Advisory Committee, which advised on the 2030 census, and the National Advisory Committee, which offered guidance on how to accurately count and collect data from racial, ethnic and other communities. At the time, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the committees' purposes "have been fulfilled."
Civil rights groups expressed dismay at the eliminations, describing them in a letter to Lutnick as a "major setback" for the bureau as it prepared for the 2030 census and modernized its data collection. The letter, sent in May on behalf of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and other groups, warned that eliminating these bodies could undermine the accuracy and breadth of demographic data.
A Census Bureau spokesman said the agency still gathers outside input through a rulemaking process that invites public comments. When asked if the reconstituted scientific panel might follow a similar path, Arturo Vargas, its former chairman, said in an email, "We are still discussing options and determining how best to use the scant resources to have the most impact, and exploring how another independent advisory committee is valued added."
Allison Plyer, a past chair of the scientific advisory committee, said the bureau has long benefited from the strategic input of experts. "They don't have that now," Plyer, chief demographer at The Data Center in New Orleans, said. "An outside perspective is incredibly important."