From WIRED · Vittoria Elliott · · 3m
A MAGA Think Tank Moved Into the Census Bureau
At least seven staffers from a Trump-aligned think tank now sit inside the agency that holds data on nearly every person in America.
In brief
At least seven staffers from a Trump-aligned think tank now sit inside the agency that holds data on nearly every person in America. A partisan group with an election-denial record now has sworn access to Census data, and the guardrails that were supposed to stop that were quietly removed in July. Originally reported…
They are already inside
Staffers from the America First Policy Institute have been detailed into the US Census Bureau, where they hold access to sensitive data and helped produce a public report questioning election integrity.
The report that started it
In August the bureau published an anonymously authored paper, "Noncitizen Voting in the 2020 Election," claiming thousands of noncitizens cast ballots. WIRED found the methodology appeared faulty.
Two authors, one think tank
WIRED first identified two of the report's authors as AFPI employees. Further reporting showed they were part of a larger group, almost entirely AFPI, placed inside the bureau.
Why this data matters
The Census holds records on nearly everyone in the country. It decides how congressional districts are drawn, how seats are apportioned, and how federal money gets split up.
Staff see a first salvo
Experts and bureau employees told WIRED they fear the noncitizen report is the opening move toward using Census data to challenge results in the midterms or in 2028.
“Frankly, it's disrespectful to the institution.”
A pattern, not a one-off
The Commerce Department circulated a rule change to stop counting noncitizens. Republicans also attacked differential privacy, the method that protects individual respondents, as skewing the count.
AFPI's reach into government
The group's first CEO, Brooke Rollins, runs Agriculture. Linda McMahon sat on its board and now runs Education. Former staffers hold posts from the EPA to NATO.
Seven people, one loophole
At least five more AFPI members joined Matthew Jensen and Jeff McCrea. All came in through the Intergovernmental Personnel Act, which allows temporary two-year details from nonprofits and universities.
An election denier on the list
AFPI elections director Thomas Lane was detailed to the bureau. He was subpoenaed in the DOJ's 2020 overturn investigation and appears in video handing forms to Arizona's fake electors.
He helped write the bills
Lane worked on an early version of the Save America Act while on a House committee. Its proof-of-citizenship requirement could disenfranchise more than 20 million people, experts say.
Not a neutral pipeline
Cornell's Danah Boyd says agencies do bring in outside researchers, but through bodies built for independent science. AFPI is not one of them.
“This is a partisan group with an agenda.”
Answering to political appointees
All the detailees sit on one project doing "ad hoc data analyses" for senior Census and Commerce leaders. It is run by a political appointee and appears short on career civil servants.
The guardrail came off in July
The bureau's data stewardship charter was rewritten to drop language barring political appointees from interfering with its data. In 2021, whistleblowers alleging exactly that pressure forced a director out.
What it means
A partisan group with an election-denial record now has sworn access to Census data, and the guardrails that were supposed to stop that were quietly removed in July.
