Census advisory committee meets despite Trump administration nixing it

Updated at 4:35 p.m. ET Sept. 22 

Members of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee, which the Trump administration disbanded this past spring, met anyway on Sept. 18 after reconstituting as an independent panel. 

“The [Census] Bureau continues to need independent expert advice, so that didn't change,” said Barbara Entwisle, the chair of the former governmental committee and now head of the independent panel, in an interview with Government Executive. “So what impact will we have? I don't know. But what I can say for sure is that if we don't do this, then we won't have an impact.”

The Census Bureau in March terminated several advisory committees consistent with a Trump executive order that called for dissolving “unnecessary” advisory councils. Entwisle said that plans for carrying on the panel’s work started soon after it was canceled. 

“I was really gratified that so many of our original members wished to move forward,” she said, emphasizing that the work, whether it’s officially for the government or not, is voluntary.  

Committee members discussed the same matters that they were scheduled to consider at their spring meeting before the panel was canceled: how to make sure census responses stay confidential; how to ensure data shared between agencies complies with privacy requirements; a new Census dataset that provides demographic information about who is exposed to environmental hazards. 

In her opening remarks at the virtual meeting, Entwisle said that she and Allison Plyer, a former committee chair who also participated in the meeting, agreed that their perspectives still had value outside of government. 

“Neither of us thought the Census Bureau ever accepted recommendations just because they came from an official advisory group. We thought it much more likely that the bureau accepted recommendations [because] the collective expertise of the committee resulted in practical, strategic intervention or validation of census plans,” she said. “That's how things are supposed to work in science and in an open society. That is our hope for today.” 

The panel unanimously approved 26 recommendations relating to the three subjects over the course of three hours. While the committee used to meet for a day-and-a-half, Entwisle said members were able to cut down on meeting time by doing most of the work beforehand. 

Members of the public were able to submit comments to the committee. For example, two networks of advocacy organizations that helped found Count All Kids, a coalition that focuses on ensuring children are accurately included in the census, sent a letter complimenting and criticizing different aspects of the bureau’s 2030 operational plan with respect to young children. 

Entwisle said that the committee may have a second meeting in March 2026. 

In response to a request for comment, the Census Bureau said that it "provides opportunities for the public to comment on our surveys, censuses and related activities through the Federal Register. We encourage the public to funnel their feedback through that channel." 

While he is not a member of the committee, Holden Thorp, the editor-in-chief of Science journals, gave opening remarks at the Sept. 18 meeting in which praised the panelists for continuing their work. He said that it’s an example of what he has seen scientists do across the country despite federal funding cuts. 

“All across America, science is continuing, and it's continuing in the same traditions of rigor and careful data and rigorous scholarship and preparing the next generation of scientists in the ways that those of us who are part of it have always been called to do,” he said.

This story has been updated with a comment from the Census Bureau.