The Census Bureau director Robert Santos announced his resignation on Thursday:
Santos — a nationally recognized statistician who is the first Latino to head the bureau — joined the federal government’s largest statistical agency as a Biden appointee after years of interference at the bureau by the first Trump administration.
Before becoming the agency’s director, Santos was a vocal opponent of how Trump officials handled the 2020 census — including a last-minute decision to end counting early during the COVID-19 pandemic and a failed push to add a question about U.S. citizenship status that was likely to deter many Latino and Asian American residents from participating in the official population tally.
This is not totally unexpected, given there were resignations in 2017 and 2021, but still. You can see how data can be influenced and why we need to think about data carefully.
