Talking Points Memo: “Census Director Steve Dillingham will be stepping down on Jan. 20, cutting short by nearly a year the five-year director term, which was scheduled to expire on Dec. 31. Dillingham announced his resignation plans in an internal Census Bureau email obtained by TPM.”
“Dillingham’s tenure atop the bureau was plagued by myriad controversies since his confirmation in Jan. 2019. His refusal to publicly push back on the efforts by the President and his allies to politicize the 2020 census has long prompted criticism from both within and outside the bureau. In recent days, the scrutiny intensified with the revelation of his involvement in a pressure campaign to push the bureau’s experts to produce data on noncitizens and undocumented immigrants before the end of Trump’s presidency. Several Democratic members of Congress called for his resignation after the demand for the data was disclosed last week. Commerce Department IG Peggy Gustafson, who revealed the gambit in a letter to Dillingham last week, is reviewing the matter.”