House Republicans Accuse Census Bureau of Inflating Blue-State Populations

A group of House Republicans are accusing the Biden administration’s Census Bureau of inflating population estimates in left-leaning states in order to increase their representation in Congress after redistricting.

“Given the extra time it took to complete the 2020 Census — including not meeting the statutory deadlines by months — we have questions about the methodology and the role the Biden White House may have played in releasing these numbers, especially as the results differ from evaluation estimates released mere months ago in ways that benefit blue states over red states,” the group wrote in a Friday letter addressed to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. 

As evidence that something untoward had taken place, the group said they contacted the Census Bureau with questions about the apportionment of House members after population estimates were released this week, but that the bureau had redirected them to the White House. “The statute is clear,” they wrote. “It is the secretary of commerce who reports the apportionment count to the president, not the other way around.”

The group didn&

#8217;t clarify what questions they asked. The Commerce Department is responsible for relaying the results of the Census Bureau’s population count to the White House, which subsequently relays it to Congress. State officials then take responsibility for drawing the boundaries of new House districts, which are reallocated among states every 10 years according to the results of the census.

Seven House seats will switch among 13 states before next year’s midterm congressional elections, according to the latest count. Five of the seats are going to states that voted in favor of Republicans in the 2020 presidential election — including two to Texas and one each to Florida, Montana, and North Carolina. Two states that voted for Democrats — Colorado and Oregon — will each gain one seat.

However, Republicans insisted the outcome should have been even more favorable to their states, and questioned whether the bureau had been affected by “political interference.”

“Even as President Trump sought to ensure the accuracy of the 2020 census apportionment results by excluding illegal aliens from the apportionment count, President Biden reversed course, deciding to dilute American citizens’ representational interests by rescinding this commonsense measure,” the group wrote. “Several liberal states with sanctuary policies may have lost more congressional seats if illegal immigrants had not been included in the apportionment base.

“States such as New Jersey and Illinois experienced large population increases of hundreds of thousands of individuals compared to the December estimates, while states such

as Arizona, Florida, and Texas experienced large decreases,” they added. “This trend calls into question whether there was any political interference with the apportionment results released by the Census Bureau.”

The 17 Republicans who signed the letter included Reps. Jim Jordan (OH) and James Comer (KY), who respectively lead their party’s members on the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee. They closed with a demand for Raimondo to provide any “documents and communications” related to the census and produced by her staff since October 15, including any material exchanged between Census Bureau staffers and the White House.