The Trump administration has yet to begin printing the required 1.5 billion paper census mailings for the upcoming 2020 census, which is set to begin next January, NPR reports.
The White House Office of Management and Budget is responsible for approving the materials for the 2020 census, but that approval has yet to appear on the website that tracks OMB reviews. U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the Supreme Court in a filing last January that "the Census Bureau must finalize the census forms by the end of June 2019 to print them on time for the 2020 decennial census."
Former Census Bureau Director John Thompson told NPR that the delay is "the biggest risk right now that you can see" to the census.
"The longer you delay, the more you're going to have to condense the schedule and the more expensive it's going to be and the greater the chance for errors to crop up," he said.
Justice Department officials told a federal judge on Monday that the administration has not yet decided whether to continue arguing for a citizenship question to be added to the 2020 census forms, after the Supreme Court's decision to keep it off, at least temporarily.
The 2020 census is scheduled to start in rural Alaska next January before continuing in the rest on the United States by April.
Spokespeople for the Census Bureau and for the company printing the forms declined to comment to NPR.
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