Judge sets census deadline in October

The U.S. census will wrap up just a few days before the Nov. 3 presidential election. U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh in California on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump from requiring the Census Bureau to finish its count by Sept. 30, saying it could make the numbers less accurate.

Why is this so important? The census numbers are used to allocate seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, determine political boundaries across the country, and distribute $1.5 trillion of federal money. After the coronavirus pandemic began, the Trump administration moved the deadline to finish the census back to Oct. 31. But in July, it tried to speed the process up by a month, saying it was necessary to deliver the numbers to the president by the legal deadline of Dec. 31. A bill to extend the delivery date remains held up in the Senate.

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