Fact-check: Sorry, Gavin, census data was calculated under Biden

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) took a shot at a social media post by Senator Jim Banks (R-Ind.) on Monday and implied that Donald Trump was at fault for any “shadiness” with the 2020 census data. However, U.S. Census Bureau data clearly shows that Newsom’s jab is misleading.

“The 2020 Census was a fraud. The Biden admin used a shady ‘privacy’ formula that scrambled the data and miscounted 14 states. It included illegal immigrants and handed Democrats extra seats. Americans deserve a fair count and I’m fighting to fix it,” Banks said in a post on X.

The delivery of apportionment data was ‘shifted 4 months’ from December 28, 2020, to April 26, 2021.

Newsom replied to Banks, saying, “Donald Trump was the President in 2020.”

While Newsom correctly pointed out that Trump was in office in 2020, he misled on who is to blame for faulty calculations in the 2020 census data.

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The census count began in Toksook Bay, Alaska, on January 21, 2020, and generally opened to the public on March 12, 2020. By April 1, 2020, the official Census Day, “most households had received an invitation to participate in the 2020 Census,” according to a government website.

However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, several steps for data collection and reporting to Congress were delayed by months, according to a U.S. Census Bureau schedule fact sheet. For example, the original self-response deadline, July 31, was delayed two and a half months to October 15.

The window for delivering redistricting data, originally scheduled for February 18 to March 31, 2021, was “shifted 6 months” to August 12 to September 16, 2021, the fact sheet said.

Most importantly, however, is the shift of the constitutionally mandated calculation and delivery of census data to Congress. The delivery of apportionment data was “shifted 4 months” from December 28, 2020, to April 26, 2021, the fact sheet noted. By that point, President Trump was no longer in office, and President Joe Biden had taken over.

The Brennan Center for Justice confirmed that then-“Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo delivered the population totals and congressional seat apportionments to President Biden on April 26,” 2021. Biden was then required to “transmit the population totals and seat apportionment to Congress, which will send the governors of each state certificates showing them how many seats their state will have going forward.”

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