Pandemic, snags cause Trump to miss giving Congress census data
The Trump administration has missed a deadline for giving Congress numbers used for dividing up congressional seats among the states, as the U.S. Census Bureau works toward fixing data irregularities found during the numbers-crunching phase of the 2020 census.
President Donald Trump on Sunday missed a deadline for transmitting the apportionment numbers to Congress. Under federal law, the president is required to hand over the numbers to Congress showing the number of people in each state within the first week of the start of Congress in the year following a once-adecade head count of every U.S. resident. There are no penalties for missing the deadline.
The president’s tardiness stemmed from the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, missing a year-end target date for giving the apportionment numbers to the president, due to the pandemic and irregularities that were discovered while crunching data from the 2020 census on a shortened schedule.
The census not only decides how many congressional seats each state gets based on population, but it also determines the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funding each year.
The earliest date the apportionment numbers will be ready is Feb. 9, as the Census Bureau fixes anomalies discovered during data processing, according to Department of Justice, which is representing the Commerce Department and Census Bureau in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of municipalities and advocacy groups in federal court in San Jose, California.
If that date holds, the Census Bureau will not finish processing the numbers until several weeks after Trump leaves office Jan. 20, putting in jeopardy an unprecedented order by the president to exclude people in the country illegally from those figures. President-elect Joe Biden opposes the order, which was inspired by an influential GOP adviser who wrote that excluding them from the apportionment process would favor Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.
Trump’s apportionment order was challenged in more than a half-dozen lawsuits around the U.S., but the Supreme Court ruled last month that any challenge was premature.
Inquiry into Giuliani: Rudy Giuliani is facing possible expulsion from the New York State Bar Association over incendiary remarks he made to President Donald Trump’s supporters last week before they violently stormed the U.S. Capitol.
The organization said Monday that it has opened an inquiry into whether Giuliani should remain a member. Its bylaws state that “no person who advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States” shall remain a member.
Removal from the bar association, a voluntary membership organization dating to 1876, is not the same as being disbarred and banned from practicing law. That can only be done by the courts.
A message seeking comment was left with Giuliani’s spokesperson. The bar association said he will be afforded due process and be given a chance to explain and defend his words and actions.
Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, is Trump’s personal lawyer and has played a prominent role in the Republican president’s spurious fight to overturn his election loss to President-elect Joe Biden, a Democrat.
Pope expands women’s role: Pope Francis changed church law Monday to explicitly allow women to do more things during Mass, granting them access to the most sacred place on the altar, while continuing to affirm that they cannot be priests.
Francis amended the law to formalize and institutionalize what is common practice in many parts of the world: Women can be installed as lectors, to read Scripture, and serve on the altar as Eucharistic ministers. Previously, such roles were officially reserved for men even though exceptions were made.
Francis said he was making the change to increase recognition of the “precious contribution” women make in the church, while emphasizing that all baptized Catholics have a role to play in the church’s mission.
But he also noted that doing so further makes a distinction between “ordained” ministries such as the priesthood and diaconate, and ministries open to qualified laity. The Vatican reserves the priesthood for men.
WHO gets China OK: Experts from the World Health Organization are due to arrive in China this week for a long-anticipated investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, the government said Monday.
The experts will arrive Thursday and meet with Chinese counterparts, the National Health Commission said in a one-sentence statement that gave no other details.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the experts will travel to the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first detected in late 2019.
Negotiations for the visit have long been underway. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed disappointment last week over delays, saying that members of the international scientific team departing from their home countries had already started on their trip as part of an arrangement between WHO and the Chinese government.
Zoo gorillas test positive: Several gorillas at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park have tested positive for the coronavirus in what is believed to be the first known cases among such primates in the United States and possibly the world.
The park’s executive director, Lisa Peterson, told The Associated Press on Monday that eight gorillas that live together at the park are believed to have the virus and several have been coughing.
It appears the infection came from a member of the park’s wildlife care team who also tested positive for the virus but has been asymptomatic and wore a mask at all times around the gorillas. The park has been closed to the public since Dec. 6 as part of the state of California’s lockdown efforts to curb coronavirus cases.
Veterinarians are closely monitoring the gorillas, which are being given vitamins, fluid and food but no specific treatment for the virus.
New Mississippi flag: Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill Monday that gives the state a new flag that no longer carries the Confederate battle emblem.
The bill signing happened just over six months after legislators retired the last state flag in the U.S. that included the rebel symbol.