The 2020 Census: Trump, the Pandemic, and Threats to Democracy

In 2020, the federal government set about the once-a-decade task of counting the nation's population. In 2021, the US Census Bureau reported the result topped 331 million people. The US relies on the census to track population growth and demographic changes and to allocate both political power and funding. But 2020 was no ordinary year, and the census, like everything else in American life, faced a perfect storm of pandemic, presidential election and political polarization. Taken together, these issues raised the question of whether the results are "fit for use" for the next decade.