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A Florida man was arrested Monday after allegedly brandishing an AK-47 rifle and firing a warning shot at a U.S. Census working retreating from his property, according to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office. Michael Cooper, 32, is accused of threatening census taker Johnny Swinney. Deputies responded to Cooper’s home on Clove Avenue in Bunnell, Fla., around 6:15 p.m. after the federal employee reported Cooper had shot at him, WKMG reported. According to the incident report, neighbors said Swinney was wearing a U.S. Census Bureau badge which was clearly identifiable on the lanyard around his neck when he approached Cooper sitting...

A Florida man was arrested Monday after shooting an AR-15 assault-style rifle at a U.S. Census worker who had come near his property. Flagler County deputies were called to a home in Bunnel, about 70 miles north of Orlando, around 6:15 after the Census worker reported that Michael Cooper, 32, had fired a shot at him, according to WKMG-TV. Neighbors told officers that the Census worker had parked on the street, away from Cooper’s home, in a vehicle that identified him as a Census worker. The worker was also wearing a lanyard that identified him as a Census worker. The...

A federal judge has stopped the 2020 census from finishing at the end of September and ordered the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident to continue for another month through the end of October, saying a shortened schedule likely would produce inaccurate results. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in California made her ruling late Thursday, two days after hearing arguments from attorneys for the Census Bureau, and attorneys for civil rights groups and local governments that had sued the Census Bureau in an effort to halt the 2020 census from stopping at the end of the month. Attorneys for...

Chief Justice John Roberts settled one political controversy over the Census last year by siding with the Supreme Court’s liberals to block a citizenship question. But surprise, surprise, Democrats are now asking courts to intervene in another Census fight. The Constitution requires that every person in America be “enumerated” every 10 years in “such Manner as [Congress] shall by Law direct” for the purpose of reapportioning Congressional seats and electoral college votes among the states. Congress has given the Census Bureau broad discretion over survey questions, schedule and statistical techniques. Congress has also set a hard deadline of Dec. 31...

A federal court has blocked an order from President Donald Trump attempting to keep illegal immigrants' census numbers from apportioning congressional districts. An unanimous three-judge panel for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that the executive memorandum from Trump breaks the executive branch's "constitutional responsibility to count the whole number of persons in each State and to apportion members of the House of Representatives among the States according to their respective numbers." The court decision prevents the Department of Commerce from reporting any information related to illegal immigrants in its census numbers that could...

“In a unanimous ruling, on December 8, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a three-judge district court must be convened in cases challenging the constitutionality of redistricting maps. In this case, Shapiro v. McManus, the Court reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and remanded the case for further proceedings. Due to a federal law providing for direct appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court from three-judge court decisions, this ruling could increase the number of redistricting challenges that are considered by the Court. Background: A federal law, known as the “Three-Judge Court Act,” specifies that constitutional...

A federal court ruled on Thursday that President Trump's order to exclude undocumented immigrants from census numbers for apportioning congressional districts is unlawful. A unanimous three-judge panel for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said in its decision that Trump's executive memorandum violates the executive branch's "constitutional responsibility to count the whole number of persons in each State and to apportion members of the House of Representatives among the States according to their respective numbers." The ruling prohibits the Department of Commerce from reporting any information regarding undocumented immigrants in its census count that could...

I need FR's professional input: do I fill out the census? They've been banging down my door. I've ignored it in the past and they left me alone. What's anyone's take on it

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WSYX/WTTE) — The United States Census Bureau says less than 60% of Columbus households have self-responded to the 2020 census. The city's response rate is less than Ohio's current self-response rate of 67.8%. The census is a constitutionally-mandated count every person living in the United States and its territories taken every 10 years....

Democratic lawmakers in Albany are never satisfied: Their party already has a firm lock on the key levers of power, yet last week they moved to solidify that power even more — via an amendment to the state Constitution. And because they control both houses of the Legislature, the measure sailed through easily, with barely any public input. The amendment deals with the redistricting process — how new maps, based on the Census, must be drawn and approved. And the changes essentially favor Dems and tie Republican hands, so Democrats will be free to draw lines to their advantage. Under...

With just weeks until the Census Bureau faces a critical deadline to finish counting 330 million Americans, cities and states are racing to get through to hard-to-reach communities who risk being left out of the final tally. At stake are billions of dollars through hundreds of federally administered programs - and political power for the next decade. Some states are so close to the cutoff point at which they would earn or lose a House seat in the apportionment that will come from census figures that just a few thousand missing people could mean a smaller congressional delegation. "The census...

Did the Census online. Very easy. Yeah, if you're not a conspiracy nut you should do the census for many, many reasons.

Section 1. Background. ... The President, by law, makes the final determination regarding the “whole number of persons in each State,” which determines the number of Representatives to be apportioned to each State, and transmits these determinations and accompanying census data to the Congress (2 U.S.C. 2a(a)). The Congress has provided that it is “the President’s personal transmittal of the report to Congress” that “settles the apportionment” of Representatives among the States, and the President’s discretion to settle the apportionment is more than “ceremonial or ministerial” and is essential “to the integrity of the process” (Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U.S....

The Census Bureau will finish collecting data next month so it can deliver population tallies to President Donald Trump by the end of the year, and will meet his order to exclude undocumented immigrants. In a statement late Monday reported by Politico, Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham announced measures intended “to accelerate the completion of data collection and apportionment counts” by Dec. 31 and will stop “field data collection” by Sept. 30. Dillingham also said the bureau “continues its work on meeting the requirements” of Trump’s order to calculate the number of congressional seats each state will have in the...

How about a little comic relief tonight from good ole Uncle Joe’s bunker? He is talking about the 2020 census but seems to get a little confused about which year it is.

An executive order signed last week by President Trump that would exclude undocumented immigrants from the decennial reapportionment process would cost the nation’s three largest states at least one seat in Congress, a new analysis finds. It is unclear how the Trump administration plans to alter any final Census figures, or what datasets they would rely on to determine how many undocumented immigrants live in each state. Most legal scholars believe the order will not stand up in court. But if it were to stand, it would likely mean Texas and Florida would each gain one fewer seat in the...

The Democratic Party platform has been published in draft form, and it is a beauty. An openly racist document, it is largely an attack on white people. The platform mentions whites or whiteness 15 times, never in a positive light. I want to focus on just one of those references to alleged white supremacy: Median incomes are lower and poverty rates are higher for Black Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and some Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, compared to median white households. But wait! Notice how they tried to slip that one by you: “some Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.” Why...

Three states would likely lose seats in the House of Representatives if President Trump's order stands to exclude illegal immigrants from the apportionment process that allocates seats based on the census. According to a study from the Pew Research Center, California, Florida and Texas would each end up with one less representative than they would otherwise get, based on overall population change. "The discretion delegated to the executive branch to determine who qualifies as an 'inhabitant' includes authority to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status," Trump said in a memorandum issued last...

Activists and civil rights groups have spent more than a year quelling immigrant communities’ fears around the census — only to have President Donald Trump issue a memorandum to exclude undocumented immigrants from census results. That has caused simmering concerns about the politicization of the census process to boil over for civil rights groups and congressional Democrats. House Oversight and Reform Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney said she plans to hold an emergency hearing on the memorandum next week. “Taking this step right in the middle of the ongoing Census is particularly egregious and sinister because it appears purposefully designed to...

Concerned about future fedral disbursements to her city, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced that a "Census Cowboy will be riding around the streets in an effort to count everyone and anyone. When I was a kid, I loved the Batman TV show. And when the city of Gotham had a real difficult challenge, one of the things the mayor there did is he called out and he sent out the distress signal to Batman. So, we are doing something similar for the census." "In order to avert an under-count, the Census Cowboy will be taking a cue from how we...