Census deadline ping-pong continues

After the Census Bureau said it would try to wrap up counting the U.S. population by Oct. 5, a federal judge said to take it back. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif., late Thursday ordered the agency to text all its workers by Friday to tell them to keep counting until the end of the month. She also told census director Steven Dillingham to confirm to the court next week that the bureau followed instructions.

Why the back-and-forth? After the coronavirus pandemic began, the Trump administration extended the deadline to finish the 2020 census to Oct. 31. But in July, it tried to speed up the process. After Koh blocked President Donald Trump from requiring the Census Bureau to stop counting by Sept. 30, the agency announced it would still try to finish early. Now workers have been ordered to continue until just days before the Nov. 3 election. The government uses the census results to allocate seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and distribute $1.5 trillion of federal money.

Dig deeper: Read my report in Compassion about the effort to count the U.S. homeless population.