Attorney: Congressional seat data not ready until February
A Trump administration attorney said Monday that the numbers used for deciding how many congressional seats each state gets won’t be ready until February, putting in jeopardy an effort by President Donald Trump to exclude people in the country illegally from those figures.
The U.S. Census Bureau has found new irregularities in the head count data that determines congressional seat allocations and the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal spending each year, John Coghlan, a deputy assistant attorney general, said during a court hearing.
Not having the apportionment numbers finished before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20 will jeopardize an effort by Trump to exclude people in the country illegally from the apportionment count since the numbers will be delivered under the administration of Biden, who opposes the effort.
The numbers could be pushed back even later in February from the expected Feb. 9 date, Coghlan said.
“It’s a continuously moving target,” he said.
Under federal law, the Census Bureau is required to turn in the numbers used for allocating congressional seats by Dec. 31, but the bureau announced last week that the numbers wouldn’t be ready.
At the time, the Census Bureau said it would finish the apportionment numbers in early 2021, as close to the end-of-year deadline as possible.
The new February date was made public during a hearing for a federal lawsuit in San Jose.
The California lawsuit was originally brought by a coalition of municipalities and advocacy groups that had sued the Trump administration in order to stop the census from ending early out of concerns that a shortened head count would cause minority communities to be undercounted. The coalition of municipalities and advocacy groups currently is seeking data and documents
to help assess the accuracy of the 2020 census.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran began enriching uranium Monday to levels unseen since its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and also seized a South Korean-flagged tanker near the crucial Strait of Hormuz, a double-barreled challenge to the West that further raised Mideast tensions.
Both decisions appeared aimed at increasing Tehran’s leverage in the waning days in office for President Donald Trump, whose unilateral withdrawal from the atomic accord in 2018 began a series of escalating incidents.
Increasing enrichment at its underground Fordo facility puts Tehran a technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent, while also pressuring President-elect Joe Biden to quickly negotiate. Iran’s seizure of the MT Hankuk Chemi comes as a South Korean diplomat was due to travel to the Islamic Republic to discuss the release of billions of dollars in Iranian assets frozen in Seoul.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif seemed to acknowledge Tehran’s interest in leveraging the situation in a tweet about its nuclear enrichment.
“Our measures are fully reversible upon FULL compliance by ALL,” he wrote.
WASHINGTON — Bracing for possible violence, the nation’s capital has mobilized the National Guard ahead of planned protests by President Donald Trump’s supporters in connection with the congressional vote expected Wednesday to affirm Joe Biden’s election victory.
Trump’s supporters are planning to rally today and Wednesday, seeking to bolster the president’s unproven claims of widespread voter fraud. “There are people intent on coming to our city armed,” D.C. Acting Police Chief Robert Contee said Monday.
A pro-Trump rally in December ended in violence as hundreds of Trump supporters, wearing the signature black and yellow of the Proud Boys faction, sought out confrontations with a collective of local activists attempting to bar them from Black Lives Matter Plaza, an area near the White House.
On Monday, Metropolitan Police Department officers arrested the leader of the Proud Boys, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, 36, after he arrived in Washington ahead of this week’s protests. Tarrio was accused of burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was torn down from a historic Black church in downtown Washington during the December protests.
A group of Google engineers and other workers announced Monday they have formed a union, creating a rare foothold for the labor movement in the tech industry.
About 225 employees at Google and its parent company Alphabet are the first dues-paying members of the Alphabet Workers Union. They represent a fraction of Alphabet’s workforce, far short of the threshold needed to get formal recognition as a collective bargaining group in the U.S.
But the new union, which will be affiliated with the larger Communication Workers of America, says it will serve as a “structure that ensures Google workers can actively push for real changes at the company.” Its members say they want more of a voice not just on wages, benefits and protections against discrimination and harassment but also broader ethical questions about how Google pursues its business ventures.
Google said Monday that it’s tried to create a supportive and rewarding workplace but suggested it won’t be negotiating directly with the union.
MILAN — Shareholders of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Peugeot voted Monday to merge and create the world’s fourth-largest auto company which, its architects hope, can more readily take on an enormous technological shift in the industry.
The only real hurdle left to closing the deal is listing shares of the new company, to be called Stellantis. The companies expect it to be finalized Jan. 16, with shares in the combined company trading on Jan. 18 in Milan and Paris and Jan. 19 on the New York Stock Exchange.