Project 2025 and the Census: Ghosts of Past, Present, and Future

By Meeta Anand

By now, information about Project 2025 and its playbook of revanchist policies is well known to many. The Leadership Conference has analyzed what’s at stake for civil rights and how it would affect many issues that matter to civil rights advocates and stewards of democracy, including plans for the U.S. Census Bureau. 

Alarmingly, Project 2025 would harm the integrity of the decennial census and other federal data collection efforts. Its proposals would politicize and weaponize federal data collection by blocking the government from collecting data that the authors think might bolster liberal causes, while establishing intrusive new data collection in other areas to achieve partisan goals. 

The sum total of the proposed actions would undermine the federal data infrastructure. They would result in politicized, inaccurate, and unreliable datasets, rendering it impossible to understand the true underlying nature of our society, enforce civil rights, advance equity agendas, or engage in evidence-based policymaking.

But, as the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. The policies set forth with respect to the Census Bureau are a retread of efforts we have seen before, are seeing right now, and will see again — regardless of who wins the elections for president and control of Congress in November.

There are several throughlines in the Project 2025 manuscript that underscore the constant threats to the collection of accurate federal data. Analyzing Project 2025’s prescriptions in light of these past and current attempts informs us that these threats are attempts to achieve predetermined partisan outcomes through manipulation of the collection and uses of data — instead of letting the data inform outcomes.

Politicization of the Census Bureau by replacing experts with political appointees.

• Project 2025 states that, “Strong political leadership is needed to increase efficiency and align the Census Bureau’s mission with conservative principles” and recommends allocating “additional political appointee positions” to the Census Bureau.
• We saw the danger such political appointees can pose during the Trump administration with the placement of several unqualified individuals in previously nonexistent deputy director positions — before and during the 2020 Census — who sought to interfere with plans for conducting the count and the production of accurate data.

Addition of a citizenship question to the census, leading to inaccurate data.

• Project 2025 calls for the addition of a citizenship question to the census.
• It’s well known that the Trump administration tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census at the 11th hour. Fortunately, the Supreme Court sided with advocates trying to stop this anti-immigrant move, saying that the Secretary of Commerce’s explanation for adding the question was “contrived.” While the Supreme Court blocked the administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, it did so based on a procedural statute and essentially provided a roadmap for including such a question in the future.
• Civil rights and other advocates are opposed to a citizenship question in the decennial census as it would lead to a less accurate census through stoking a climate of fear among immigrants and mixed-status households. The Census Bureau’s own research, as well as a recent bureau report, have pointed to the likelihood that a citizenship question would reduce response rates, leading to undercounts in all communities. 
• The efforts to add a citizenship question to the census continue to play out in today’s Congress. Conservative lawmakers have authored bills and appropriations riders to exclude all noncitizens or undocumented immigrants from the apportionment counts, which could only be achieved by including a question on citizenship or immigration status in the census. Such an exclusion would violate the plain language of the 14th Amendment, which provides for the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives based on the “whole number of persons in each State.”

Skewing Census Bureau programs and data to favor certain communities over other (often underserved) communities.

• Project 2025 calls for eliminating advisory committees, or replacing current members with loyalists, and focusing census outreach efforts in conservative communities, which would skew the final numbers and shift political power (as well as resource allocations) to boost partisan objectives and outcomes. 
• The current efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants from the apportionment counts date back to then-President Trump’s July 2020 memorandum, which required the Census Bureau to compile data that would have allowed the president to calculate congressional apportionment after excluding undocumented immigrants from the state population totals. The ploy could have changed the balance of political power between the states and given states the tools to pursue citizen-only intrastate redistricting.
• The House appropriations bill funding the Census Bureau in 2025 would allow only two household (or business) contacts in every survey. While this limitation would have a devastating impact on response rates overall, it would fall especially hard on persistently undercounted communities where additional outreach is needed to counteract past and current fears of the misuse of data.

Potentially reversing vital updates to statistical standards on race and ethnicity data.

• Project 2025 recommends that a conservative administration review any revisions made to the federal statistical standards for race and ethnicity data collection, which govern the census and other federal data activities (Statistical Policy Directive 15) because — according to the authors — they could somehow be used to benefit progressive agendas. (In a separate part of Project 2025, the authors call for eliminating the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s EEO-1 data collection of employment statistics by race and ethnicity).

• On March 28, 2024, the U.S.Office of Management and Budget announced changes to Statistical Policy Directive 15. These changes, which the civil rights community has pursued for years, were finalized after years of study, more than 20,000 public comments, and dozens of listening sessions. The new standards include a distinct “Middle Eastern or North African” category, combine the race and ethnicity questions so people’s responses can more accurately reflect their identities, and require collection of more detailed data by default.

• Undoing or failing to implement these much-needed updates to Statistical Policy Directive 15 would be consistent with the actions of the previous Trump administration, which halted the process for updating the standards before the 2020 Census. 

Depriving the Census Bureau of adequate funding.

• While Project 2025 does not explicitly threaten Census Bureau funding, it calls for improved financial management, cost reductions, increased efficiencies, and a full audit of the 2030 Census life-cycle cost estimate. If properly implemented, these mandates could lead to improved data collection activities and products. But an emphasis solely on cost-cutting could result in inaccurate data and continued (if not worse) undercounting of underserved and overlooked communities and populations.

• The proposed Fiscal Year 2025 funding level for the Census Bureau in the relevant House appropriations bill would underfund the Census Bureau at a time when funding should ramp up for 2030 Census research and planning. Inadequate funding for the Census Bureau makes it infinitely harder to conduct a fair and accurate census that counts all communities equally well.

Politicized and weaponized control over the federal data infrastructure would give partisan actors the ability to warp data in a way that supports whatever narratives and policy justifications an administration wants. Many of these proposals seek to obfuscate the demographic composition of our population and make it harder to identify and address inequities or engage in any race-conscious policymaking or DEIA activities and policies.

Even though we are only just approaching the midway point of the census cycle, we can lift-up the importance of the federal data infrastructure, support the implementation of Statistical Policy Directive 15, fight for robust funding for the Census Bureau, and combat the threats of pernicious proposals that lead to undercounting of our communities, inaccurate data, and — ultimately — unfair representation and resource distribution. These ongoing threats remind us that while the work of the Census Bureau is only top of mind for many in the final years of each decade, its importance — and our mission to safeguard its work — is evergreen.

Meeta Anand is the senior director of the census and data equity program at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.