Census count ends early — implications for California

The Supreme Court is allowing President Trump to end the 2020 Census count early. Trump says the deadline needed to be moved up to give Census officials enough time to process the data before the end of the year. Photo by Tony Webster (CC BY 2.0)

The Census count ends midnight Hawaii time. The Supreme Court earlier this week allowed the Trump administration to cut the Census count by about two weeks. It’s bad news for civil rights groups and big diverse states like California, who were pushing for more time to make sure everyone was counted.

“If you take the numbers as is, you take the flaws that’s in the count. … You’re significantly shifting political power,” says Paul Ong, Director of the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge. “But it’s also more than that. We use these numbers for economic purposes … and it has long-term implications in terms of who gets what and who gets left out.”