US Census Bureau sped up its counting schedule by a month, which could result in the exclusion of communities of color

Andrew Harnik/AP

• The US Census Bureau sped up its counting schedule for 2020, which could potentially result in an undercount of communities of color.
• A request to extend the deadline for processing census data passed the Democratic-controlled House as part of coronavirus-relief legislation but is now stalled in the Senate.
• The request to Congress also asked that the deadline for turning in data used for drawing legislative and local districts be extended from March 30, 2021, to July 31, 2021. The Census Bureau website said the deadline is the end of March.
• Census experts and civil rights activists worry the sped-up deadline could affect the thoroughness of the count, which determines how $1.5 trillion in federal spending is distributed and how many congressional districts each state gets.
• Civil rights groups, states, cities and individuals have filed at least a half-dozen lawsuits challenging the memorandum as unconstitutional and an attempt to limit the power of Latinos and immigrants of color.
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ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The U.S. Census Bureau sped up the timetable for crunching 2020 census numbers on Friday after an earlier request for an extension stalled in the Senate and as pressure mounts to turn in data used to determine congressional districts by year's end, when President Donald Trump is still in office.

On its website Friday, the bureau listed the deadline for processing data used to apportion the districts as Dec. 31. As recently as Thursday, it had listed a time frame of Oct. 31, 2020 to April 30, 2021 — an estimate based on a request for an extension that it submitted to Congress in April.

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