The reliability of Census Bureau information during the Trump administration is coming under question again.
This month, the bureau's parent agency, the Commerce Department, quietly cut language banning political interference from the department's scientific integrity policy, NPR has learned.
The removal was part of an unannounced policy revision dated Aug. 19 — the day after the bureau issued a highly unusual report with claims about non-U.S. citizen voting from a team that, as NPR previously reported, has ties to a think tank founded by officials from President Trump's first administration.
The revised scientific integrity policy applies to all agencies under the Commerce Department, including the weather data-providing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Bureau of Economic Analysis that's known for tracking the country's gross domestic product.
But the change comes amid growing concerns from former Census Bureau officials and other data experts about political interference at the U.S. government's largest statistical agency, as it prepares for the 2030 national head count that's set to be used to redistribute political representation and federal funding to communities for the next decade.
Protecting against "inappropriate influence" is no longer a "hallmark" of scientific integrity
The Commerce Department updated its policy for promoting a "culture of scientific integrity" in January 2025, days before Trump's second inauguration.
The 2025 version included bans on attempts to shape or interfere in data collection, statistical analysis and other scientific activities "against well-accepted scientific methods and theories or without scientific justification."
The department's policy, the 2025 version said, involves ensuring scientific findings at its agencies "are not suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes and are not subjected to inappropriate influence," as well as making sure there's "independent review of facilities, methodologies, and other scientific activities as appropriate to ensure scientific integrity."
That language is missing, however, in the Trump administration's revision of the policy, according to an NPR analysis of text posted on the Commerce Department's website.
And while the revision adopts a definition for "scientific integrity" that is similar to the previous version, it no longer says that "protection from inappropriate influence" is among the "hallmarks of scientific integrity."
Spokespeople for the Commerce Department and Census Bureau did not respond to NPR's requests for comment.
The policy change is the latest sign of Trump officials weaponizing the Census Bureau, experts warn
The revised scientific integrity policy has heightened concerns among former Census Bureau officials and other data experts that the Trump administration is making moves to weaponize the statistical agency.
While most of the public may not be familiar with the policy, Nancy Potok, a former deputy director at the bureau who has also served at the Commerce Department, sees the removed language as "a major change that eliminates the guardrails against political interference in the statistical and scientific data products of the department."
Potok has been tracking how statistical agencies have been responding to a years-long, bipartisan effort to make sure the federal government produces trustworthy information. That included a 2018 law that led to a rule known among federal data experts as the "Trust Regulation." The rule requires that statistical agencies "determine the policies and practices that ensure objectivity of its statistical activities" and produce data that is "impartial and free from undue influence and the appearance of undue influence."
"The fact that there is a conscious effort to revise the department administrative orders and not incorporate things that are in the [Trust Regulation], instead of going in the other direction, is definitely troubling and needs some explanation," Potok adds.
For former Census Bureau Director Robert Santos, a Biden nominee, the close timing of the policy revision and the bureau's release of an unauthored report with claims about noncitizen voting is striking.
"It's entirely possible that this was done to reconcile the Department of Commerce and the administration's own actions by publishing an external partisan document about voting on the Census Bureau website," Santos says. "The publishing exemplifies inappropriate influence. It was not transparent, and it didn't even include career staff experts."
In recent months, the Trump administration has made other moves that have raised alarms among longtime observers of the bureau. In June, it banned the bureau from using a data privacy protection technique that the agency had used for decades. The change has delayed the release of new estimates from the American Community Survey and may ultimately reduce the amount of statistics the bureau can release about local areas and small populations, including rural communities.
Proposals for major changes to the 2030 census may also be on their way, the administration has signaled.
All of it comes at a particularly vulnerable moment for the bureau, after the Trump administration's slashing of the federal workforce fueled a brain drain of statisticians, economists and other expert civil servants.
For the bureau's remaining staff, the revised scientific integrity policy sets up a new system for investigating alleged violations with a reduced role for the department's lawyers that troubles Beth Jarosz, vice president of the Association of Public Data Users.
"There's room for interference because the way that the new rule is structured leaves lots of opportunities to put pressure on staff to act in a certain way, to decide things in a certain way or to come to certain conclusions," Jarosz says. "It certainly seems like the guardrails, if they are still there at all, they are much weaker than they used to be."
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